Saprodesmium W. Dong and Doilom gen. nov.

Index Fungorum number: IF558196; Facesoffungi number: FoF 09873

Etymology: “saprus” = saprobic, referring to the saprobic lifestyle of the fungus; “desmós” = bond, link, referring to the aggregated conidia in sporodochia

Saprobic on decaying wood submerged in freshwater.

Sexual morph: undetermined.

Asexual morph: hyphomycetous. Colonies on natural substrate, effuse, gregarious, punc- tiform, sporodochial, raised, black. Mycelium partly immersed in natural substrate, con- sisting of branched, septate, thin-walled, smooth, pale brown to brown hyphae. Conidio- phores micronematous, mononematous, unbranched, vesiculate, septate. Conidiogenous cells holoblastic, monoblastic, integrated, determinate. Conidia solitary, obovoid to ellipsoidal, clearly muriform, olivaceous when young, becoming quite blackish with age and obscur- ing the septa, with several subhyaline basal cells, smooth, thin-walled. Conidial secession schizolytic.

Type species: Saprodesmium dematiosporum W. Dong, Doilom and K.D. Hyde

Notes: –  The BlastN search of NCBI’s GenBank using the LSU sequence shows Saprodesmium dematiosporum has the closest hits with several genera in Pleurotheciaceae, i.e., Rhexoacrodictys erecta (KUMCC 20-0194, similarity = 96.68%), Neomonodictys muri- formis (MFLUCC 16-1136, similarity = 94.11%) and Pleurothecium obovoideum (CBS 209.95, similarity = 93.73%). The closest hits using SSU sequence are Rhexoacrodictys erecta (KUMCC 20-0194, similarity = 99.54%), Dematipyriforma aquilaria (3-11-1, similarity = 99.49%) and Pleurothecium aquaticum (B-27, similarity = 99.06%). Based on ITS BlastN search, the closest relatives are however Phaeoisaria sp. (BAB-4787, similarity = 97.11%) and Pleurothecium re- curvatum (CBS 138686, similarity = 96.11%). Saprodesmium dematiosporum clusters as an inde- pendent branch between Dematipyriforma and Rhexoacrodictys with high bootstrap support in concatenated LSU-SSU-ITS-rpb2 phylogeny (100% ML BS/1.00 BI PP, Figure 1) and indi- vidual ITS phylogeny (100% ML BS/1.00 BI PP, Supplementary Figure S2). Saprodesmium dematiosporum clusters with Rhexoacrodictys species in individual LSU phylogeny, but no bootstrap support (Supplementary Figure S1).

Figure 1. Cont.

Figure 1. RAxML tree of Savoryellomycetidae with four orders, Conioscyphales, Fuscosporellales, Pleurotheciales and Savoryellales. The multi-locus tree is generated from combined LSU, SSU, ITS and rpb2 sequence data. Bootstrap support values for maximum likelihood (the first value) equal to or greater than 60% and Bayesian posterior probabilities (the second value) equal to or greater than 0.95 are placed near the branches as ML BS/BI PP. The asterisk “*” represents bootstrap support values with 100% ML BS and 1.00 BI PP. The tree is rooted to Doratomyces stemonitis AFTOL-ID 1380 and Microascus trigonosporus AFTOL-ID 914. The ex-type cultures are indicated using “T” after strain numbers and the new species introduced in this study are indicated in bold.