Plowrightia Sacc., Syll. fung. (Abellini) 2: 635 (1883).
MycoBank number: MB 4262; Index Fungorum number: IF 4262; Facesoffungi number: FoF 00088; 17 morphological species (Species Fungorum 2020), 2 species with molecular data.
Type species – Plowrightia ribesia (Pers.) Sacc., Syll. fung. (Abellini) 2: 635 (1883).
≡ Sphaeria ribesia Pers., Ann. Bot. (Usteri) 11: 24 (1794).
Notes – Barr (1972) synonymized Plowrightia under Dothiora. However, Plowrightia is different from Dothiora based on the pulvinate, erumpent ascostromata, with small locules which height is greater than width (Thambugala et al. 2014a). Phylogetic analyses indicated that Plowrightia is a member of Dothideaceae (Winton et al. 2007, Thambugala et al. 2014a). Theissen & Sydow (1915) synonymized Plowrightia balansiana, P. rhynchosporae, and Polystomella aphanes under Uleodothis based on morpholocal similarity. Plowrightia and Uleodothis are similar in ascostromatal and ascospore characters (Hyde et al. 2018). In our phylogenetic analyses, Plowrightia abietis is grouped with Rhizosphaera oudemansii (92 % ML, 1.0 PP, Fig. 27). Therefore, we agree with the conclusion of Thambugala et al. (2014a) that Plowrightia abietis and R. oudemansii are identical with the latter as the asexual morph of P. abietis. Plowrightia periclymeni formed a separate lineage with abietis, Rhizosphaera kalkhoffii and R. oudemansii (0.97 PP, Fig. 27). In our study, we place Plowrightia as a genus in Dothideaceae. However, more collections and sequence data are needed to confirm its taxonomic placement.
Figure 27 – Phylogram generated from maximum likelihood analysis (RAxML) of Dothideales based on ITS, LSU and SSU sequence data. Maximum likelihood bootstrap values equal or above 70 %, Bayesian posterior probabilities equal or above 0.90 (MLBS/PP) are given at the nodes. An original isolate number is noted after the species name. The tree is rooted to Elsinoe phaseoli (CBS 165.3), E. veneta (AFTOL-ID 1853), Myriangium duriaei (AFTOL-ID 1304), and M. hispanicum (CBS 247.33). The ex-type strains are indicated in bold. Hyphen (-) represents support values below 70 % MLBS and 0.90 PP.