Cladosporiaceae Nann., Repert. mic. uomo: 404 (1934).

MycoBank number: MB 80600; Index Fungorum number: IF 80600; Facesoffungi number: FoF 06966, 356 species.

Diverse habitats. Sexual morph: Ascomata immersed to superficial, scattered or gregarious, brown to black, globose to subglobose, uniloculate, with or without ostiolar necks. Ostiole necks, with numerous periphysoids. Peridium composed of several layers of brown, thickened cells of usually textura angularis. Hamathecium comprising hyaline, septate, subcylindrical pseudoparaphyses. Asci 8-spored, bitunicate, hyaline, smooth, sessile to subsessile, obovoid to ellipsoid or subcylindrical, with or without apical ring. Ascospores fasciculate, obovoid, guttulate, ellipsoid to fusiform, hyaline to pale brown, septate, smooth to slightly roughened, mucous sheath sometimes present. Asexual morph: Hyphomycetous. Colonies on natural substrate effuse, greyish brown to brown, velvety. Mycelium mostly immersed, composed of branched, septate, pale brown, smooth to minutely verruculose hypha. Conidiophores macronematous, mononematous, solitary, arising terminally and laterally from hyphae, erect, straight to slightly flexuous, cylindrical, oblong to filiform, sometimes geniculate, unbranched or branched. Conidiogenous cells mostly polyblastic, integrated, terminal and intercalary, often distinctly sympodially proliferating, filiform, cylindrical to oblong, conspicuous, subdenticulate to denticulate. Conidia catenate, in densely branched, acropetal chains, straight to slightly curved, subhyaline to brown, smooth or verruculose; terminal conidia globose, subglobose to obovoid, broadly rounded at the apex, intercalary conidia subglobose, broadly ellipsoid-ovoid, aseptate, with distal hila, often distinctly denticulate (photoplates of asexual can be seen in Schubert et al. 2007b, Bensch et al. 2010, 2012).

TypeCladosporium Link.

Notes – Nannizzi (1934) introduced Cladosporiaceae to accommodate Cladosporium which is one of the largest genera of dematiaceous hyphomycetous. Braun et al. (2003) proposed a new genus Davidiella and confirmed it as the sexual morph of Cladosporium based on molecular data. The new genus was placed in Mycosphaerellaceae (Braun et al. 2003). However, Aptroot (2006) reported that the characters of ascospores in Davidiella are distinct from those of Mycosphaerella. Schoch et al. (2006) performed phylogenetic analysis using four nuclear loci (LSU, SSU, rpb-2 and tef1) and separated Davidiella into a different family from Mycosphaerella (Mycosphaerellaceae). Thus, a new family Davidiellaceae was introduced to accommodate Davidiella with its Cladosporium asexual morphs. However, Cladosporiaceae (1934) predates Davidiellaceae (2006) in Capnodiales. Cladosporiaceae comprises nine genera. Wijayawardene et al. (2014b) proposed to adopt Cladosporium over Davidiella.