Quaternaria quaternata (Pers.) J. Schröt.

Mehrabi, Mehdi, Hemmati, Roghayeh, Vasilyeva, Larissa N. & Trouillas, Florent P., 2016, Diatrypella macrospora sp. nov. and new records of diatrypaceous fungi from Iran, Phytotaxa 252 (1), pp. 43-55 : 51-52

Quaternaria quaternata (Pers.) J. Schröt. , in Cohn, Krypt.-Fl. Schlesien (Breslau) 3.2(4): 451 (1897). Fig. 6

Basionym: Sphaeria quaternata Pers. in Observ. mycol. (Lipsiae) 1: 64 (1796).

Synonym: Eutypella quaternata (Pers.) Rappaz in Mycol. helv. 2(3): 502 (1987).

Saprobic on decaying wood. Sexual morph: Stromata densely immersed in the bark of dead branches (1.5 cm diameter), dotted at the surface with tiny black ectostroma; 2–6 perithecial arranged in a stromata in the bark, circular, 1–2 mm diam, stromatal aggregations widely effused over branches; perithecia black, circinately arranged, 300–600 μm diam. Asci octospori, almost cylindrical or slightly clavate, (70–)90–130(–155) × 6–7.5 μm. Ascospores uni or biseriate, allantoid, dilute brownish,: (8–)9–13(–14) × 2–3 μm. Paraphyses were elongate, filiform. Asexual morph: Undetermined.

Cultural characteristics:—Colonies white and fulvous (13, i) in the center on PDA, with dense, chiefly immersed, felty mycelium, circular to slightly irregular, reverse sienna (13i) and black particularly in the colony center after 2 weeks in the dark at 24 °C, covering 75 mm Petri-dish after 16 days at 24°C.

Specimen examined:— IRAN, Guilan Province, Rasht City, on dead branches of Fagus sp. , 11 July 2013, M. Mehrabi, GNF13 ( IRAN 16681F, IRAN 2348C).

Notes:— Quaternaria was proposed by Tulasne & Tulasne (1863). Quaternaria quaternata was described as the type species of the genus Quaternaria and later proposed to be included in genus Eutypella ( Rappaz 1989) . However, Gams (1994) has not confirmed the conservation of the name Eutypella against Quaternaria . Molecular analysis by Acero et al. (2004) supported maintaining Quaternaria as an independent genus. Vasilyeva (2011) concluded that this genus can be distinguished as a separate genus not only because its name precedes that of Eutypella , but because the stromata of its members are cryptosphaeroid in their appearance and develop within the bark parenchyma. Based on both morphology and molecular sequence data, the occurrence of Quaternaria quaternata in Iran was confirmed with 100% bootstrap values in MP and NJ analysis ( Fig.1 ). In our analysis, Quaternaria genus formed a clade with Cryptovalsa genus and this topology has been obtained previously ( Trouillas et al. 2011). Vasilyeva (2011) has suggested that Quaternaria is the eutypelloid counterpart of Cryptosphaeria , but our analysis did not support this hypothesis.

Figures

FIGURE 1. One of the 48 most parsimonious trees obtained from the ITS sequence data. MP/NJ Bootstrap support values from 1000 replicates higher than 50% are reported at the nodes.The original strain numbers are noted after the species names. The ex-type strains are in bold. The new sequences obtained in this study are indicated in highlight.

FIGURE 6. Quaternaria quaternata from Fagus sp., (1) Habit of ascostromata on bark. (2) Longitudinal section through the stroma shows ostioles and perithecia (3) Ascus with ascocpores (4) Ascospores (5) Colony morphology on PDA.—Bars 1 = 1 mm. 2 = 500 μm. 3,4= 10 μm.