Herpotrichia Fuckel, Fungi rhenani exsic., suppl., fasc. 7 (nos 2101-2200): no. 2171 (1868).
MycoBank number: MB 2307; Index Fungorum number: IF 2307; Facesoffungi number: FoF 00770; 61 morphological species (Species Fungorum 2020), 10 species with molecular data.
Type species – Herpotrichia herpotrichoides (Fuckel) P.F. Cannon, Trans. Br. mycol. Soc. 79(2): 338 (1982).
≡ Sphaeria herpotrichoides Fuckel, Fungi rhenani exsic., fasc. 10: no. 952 (1864).
Notes – Herpotrichia was established by Fuckel (1868) with Herpotrichia rhenana and H. rubi without assigning a type. Holm (1979) assigned H. rubi as the generic type as it was validly published two years later H. rhenana. However, Holm (1979) and Cannon (1982) assigned H. herpotrichoides as generic type as the synonymous Sphaeria herpotrichoides is the earliest name and should be given priority. Herpotrichia is characterized by erumpent to superficial ascomata, clavate to cylindrical, 4–8-spored asci and hyaline to pale brown, 1-septate ascospores (Sivanesan 1984), as well as Pyrenochaeta-like asexual morph (Samuels & Müller 1978, Schneider 1979, Sivanesan 1984). Morphologically, Herpotrichia resembles Byssosphaeria, Melanomma, Pseudotrichia in having immersed, erumpent to superficial ascomata, usually embedded in a subiculum, and similar characters of ascospores (Bose 1961, Barr 1984). Zhang et al. (2012b) proposed to consider several criteria such as host, location and habitat. Phylogenetically, Herpotrichia is polyphyletic, Herpotrichia diffusa clustered with Byssosphaeria; H. juniper, H. macrotricha and H. vaginaspora formed a distinct clade; and H. parasitica formed a single clade close to Morosphaeriaceae (Mugambi & Huhndorf 2009a, Zhang et al. 2012b, Tian et al. 2015, Hashimoto et al. 2017a, Wanasinghe et al. 2018c). Tian et al. (2015) examined the type species H. herpotrichoides and retained Herpotrichia in Melanommataceae, pending sequence data for the type species.
Species
Herpotrichia herpotrichoides