Pseudokeissleriella Jian K. Liu, 2022

Yang, Yi, Zhang, Sheng-Nan, Yu, Xian-Dong & Liu, Jian-Kui, 2022, Pseudokeissleriella bambusicola gen. et sp. nov. (Lentitheciaceae, Pleosporales) from bamboos in Sichuan province, China, Phytotaxa 560 (3), pp. 263-273 : 267

Pseudokeissleriella Jian K. Liu , gen. nov.

MycoBank: MB 844117; Facesoffungi number: FoF 12707

Etymology:—The prefix “pseudo-” means “lying, false”, and the name “ Pseudokeissleriella ” refers to its morphological similarity to the genus “ Keissleriella ”.

Saprobic on decaying woody substrates. Sexual morph: Ascomata immersed to erumpent, subglobose, dark brown to black, ostiolate, glabrous, unilocular, coriaceous. Ostiole dark brown, periphysate. Peridium with multi-layers, comprising hyaline to brown cells of textura angularis. Hamathecium pseudoparaphyses, remotely septate. Asci 8- spored, bitunicate, cylindrical to cylindric-clavate, short pedicellate, with an ocular chamber. Ascospores overlapping bi-seriate, fusiform, tapering to subobtuse ends, the upper cell is swollen towards the median septum, hyaline, septate, guttulate and with or without a mucilaginous sheath. Asexual morph: Undetermined.

Type species: Pseudokeissleriella bambusicola Yi Yang, S.N. Zhang & Jian K. Liu

Notes: —The phylogenetic analysis showed that two isolates of Pseudokeissleriella formed a monophyletic clade in Lentitheciaceae and is closely related to the monotypic genera Katumotoa (type: Ka. bambusicola ) and Neoophiosphaerella (type: N. sasicola ) ( FIGURE 1 ). Pseudokeissleriella resembles Katumotoa in having immersed, subglobose ascomata, but they can be distinguished by the ascospores. Pseudokeissleriella has fusiform ascospores tapering to subobtuse ends, with a swollen upper cell near the median septum and mucilaginous sheath, while Katumotoa has apiosporous ascospores with distinctive elongated bipolar mucilaginous sheath ( Tanaka & Harada 2005). Pseudokeissleriella differs from Neoophiosphaerella in having immersed, globose ascomata and fusiform, 1-septate ascospores, while the latter has superficial, hemispherical, with clypei ascomata and filiform, multi-septate ascospores ( Tanaka et al. 2015). In addition, referring to the recommendations of Jeewon & Hyde (2016) for the establishment of species boundaries among fungi, Pseudokeissleriella can be distinguished from Ka. bambusicola and N. sasicola based on sequences data comparison from LSU (14/831; 11/831) and ITS (25/548; 36/548). The ascospores of Pseudokeissleriella are somewhat similar to Keissleriella . However, Keissleriella is thought to have a striking feature that most of their species have brown or black setae inside or around the ostiole. Pseudokeissleriella can be easily distinguished from the latter by the absence of setae around the ostiole, as well as the distance in molecular phylogeny.

Figures

FIGURE 1. RAxML analysis of Lentitheciaceae based on a concatenated dataset of SSU, ITS, LSU and tef-1α sequence data. Bootstrap support values for maximum likelihood (ML) and maximum parsimony (MP) equal to or greater than 75% were placed above the branches (ML/MP). Bayesian posterior probabilities (BYPP) equal to or greater than 0.95 were shown as bold branches.Ex-type strains were in bold and new strains generated in this study were indicated in red.