Pleosporaceae Nitschke, Verh. naturh. Ver. preuss. Rheinl. 26: 74 (1869).

MycoBank number: MB 81188; Index Fungorum number: IF 81188; Facesoffungi number: FoF 00500, >2000 known species.

Pathogenic to human or saprobic on woody and dead herbaceous stems or leaves. Sexual morph: Ascomata perithecial, initially immersed and becoming erumpent to nearly superficial, black, globose, subglobose or ovoid, sometimes hairy or setose, ostiolate. Ostiole papillate or apapillate, occasionally with a pore-like ostiole, ostiolar canal filled with or without periphyses. Peridium thin, usually thick at the sides, thinner at the base. Hamathecium comprising hyaline, septate, cellular pseudoparaphyses interspersed with asci. Asci 8-spored, bitunicate, fissitunicate, cylindric-clavate,  with an ocular chamber.  Ascospores 1–2-seriate, partially overlapping, phragmosporous or muriform, brown or pale brown, with or without mucilaginous sheath. Asexual morph: Coelomycetous or hyphomycetous, and the conidiogenous cells can be phialidic, annellidic or sympodial blastic.

TypeStemphylium botryosum Wallr.

NotesPleosporaceae was introduced based on the immersed ascomata and pseudoparaphyses, which was assigned to Sphaeriales. Pleosporaceae was earlier placed in Pseudosphaeriaceae by Theissen & Sydow (1917a) and then later raised to ordinal rank as the Pseudosphaeriales. Luttrell (1955) assigned Pleosporaceae under Pleosporales and treated Pseudosphaeriales as a synonym of Pleosporales. Later, availability of molecular data, and multi- gene phylogenetic studies confirmed the familial placement of Pleosporaceae with respect to other families in Pleosporales (Lumbsch & Huhndorf 2010, Zhang et al. 2012b). Alternaria, Bipolaris, phoma-like and Stemphylium are more common asexual morphs in Pleosporaceae and they are saprobes or parasites on various hosts. Boonmee et al. (2011) transferred Allonecte from Tubeufiaceae to Pleosporaceae. Ariyawansa et al. (2015c) revised the family and accepted 18 genera. According to Wijayawardene et al. (2018), 16 genera are accepted in Pleosporaceae based on morphological and molecular data. Pem et al. (2019c) accepted Gibbago in Pleosporaceae based on morphological and molecular data. In this study, we accept 23 genera in Pleosporaceae.