Conidiobolus Bref., Mykol. Untersuch. 6(2): 35 (1884), emend.

Nie, Yong, Yu, De-Shui, Wang, Cheng-Fang, Liu, Xiao-Yong & Huang, Bo, 2020, A taxonomic revision of the genus Conidiobolus (Ancylistaceae, Entomophthorales): four clades including three new genera, MycoKeys 66, pp. 55-81 : 55

Conidiobolus Bref., Mykol. Untersuch. 6(2): 35 (1884), emend.

= Delacroixia Sacc. & P. Syd., Syll. fung. (Abellini) 14(1): 457 (1899).

Conidiobolus subgen. Delacroixia (Sacc. & P. Syd.) Tyrrell & Macleod, J. Invert. Pathol. 20: 12 (1972).

Type species.

Conidiobolus utriculosus Bref.

Description.

Mycelia colourless. Primary conidiophores simple or branched dichotomously, positively phototropic, bearing a single or 2-4 primary conidia. Primary conidia forcibly discharged, multinucleate, colourless, pyriform, obovoid, globose to subglobose. Secondary conidia usually with shape of primary conidia but smaller, formed singly on short secondary conidiophores. Microspores arising from primary or secondary conidia. Villose appendaged globose conidia and formed villose conidia. Chlamydospores formed intercalarily within assimilative hyphae. Zygospores formed in axial alignment with one or two (homothallic or heterothallic) conjugating segments.

Notes.

C. utriculosus , the type species of the genus Conidiobolus , has not been re-collected since Brefeld isolated it in 1884 and most taxonomists working on entomophthoroid fungi now universally recognised it as C. coronatus ( Gryganskyi et al. 2013). However, the smaller pear-shaped conidia of C. utriculosus are different from the larger globose conidia of C. coronatus and villose spores in C. coronatus are not observed in C. utriculosus ( Brefeld 1884; King 1977). Consequently, C. coronatus is not synonymised with C. utriculosus in this study. Instead, this study agrees with Srinivasan and Thirumalachar (1967) and King (1977) to place C. minor in synonymy with C. utriculosus because the small conidia of C. minor were probably replicative conidia of C. utriculosus . Nevertheless, neither C. utriculosus nor C. minor has available living cultures. Therefore, we have not yet designated an epitype and thus no DNA sequences for explaining this type. Fortunately, we are able to recognise clade III (Fig. 1 ) as Conidiobolus on the basis of its synapomorph, namely microspores.

Figures

Figure 1. Phylogenetic tree constructed by maximum likelihood analyses of nucLSU, nucSSU, EF- 1 α and mtSSU sequences for Entomophthoromycotina, with some chytrid and mucoralean fungi as outgroups. Three new genera and one Chinese new record are shown in red. Maximum likelihood bootstrap values (≥ 50 %) / Bayesian posterior probabilities (≥ 0.50) of main clades are indicated along branches. Scale bar indicates substitutions per site.