Pseudopeyronellaea L.W. Hou, L. Cai & Crous, in Hou, Groenewald, Pfenning, Yarden, Crous & Cai, Stud. Mycol. 96: 339 (2020)
Index Fungorum number: IF 833500; MycoBank number: MB 833500; Facesoffungi number: FoF 11528
Etymology – Name refers to the morphological similarity with the genus Peyronellaea.
Sexual morph: Ascomata pseudothecial, globose, pyriform, superficial, with central papillate ostiole, lacking setae; wall of multi-layered. Pseudoparaphyses absent. Asci bitunicate, narrowly ellipsoid to subcylindrical, 8-spored. Ascospores bi- to triseriate, hyaline, ovate to fusoid, prominently guttulate with mucoid sheath, widest just above septum, ends sub obtusely rounded. Asexual morph unknown.
Type species – Pseudopeyronellaea eucalypti (Crous & M.J. Wingf.) L.W. Hou et al.
Notes – Species of Peyronellaea are characterised by producing pycnidial conidiomata with phialidic conidiogenous cells as well as dictyochlamydospores, having both transverse and longitudinal septa (Aveskamp et al. 2009a). Later, Peyronellaea was synonymised with Didymella (Chen et al. 2015) after phylogenetic analysis. In the present study, Peyronellaea eucalypti that was collected from leaves of Eucalyptus pellita (Myrtaceae), with only a sexual morph observed in culture, is phylogenetically cally distant from the Didymella clade and other known genera of Didymellaceae. Therefore, a new genus Pseudopeyronellaea is introduced to accommodate Peyronellaea eucalypti. Morphologically, Pseudopeyronellaea differs from Didymella by producing bi- to triseriate, ovate to fusoid and prominently guttulate ascospores with mucoid sheaths, while ascospores of Didymella species are biseriate, ellipsoidal to cymbiform (Chen et al. 2015).
Species