Five new species of Gloeandromyces (Fungi, Laboulbeniales) from tropical American bat flies (Diptera, Streblidae), revealed by morphology and phylogenetic reconstruction

ABSTRACT

This paper describes and illustrates five new species of Gloeandromyces (Ascomycota, Laboulbeniales) associated with tropical American bat flies (Diptera, Streblidae). These are Gloeandromyces cusucoensis sp. nov. from Trichobius uniformis in Costa Rica and Honduras, G. diversiformis sp. nov. from Strebla wiedemanni in Costa Rica, G. plesiosaurus sp. nov. from Trichobius yunkeri in Panama, G. pseudodickii sp. nov. from Trichobius longipes in Ecuador and Panama, and G. verbekeniae sp. nov. from Strebla galindoi in Ecuador and Panama. The description of these five species doubles the number of known species in the genus. Morphological characteristics, host association, and a three-locus (18S nuc rDNA, 28S nuc rDNA, TEF1) phylogenetic reconstruction support placement of these taxa in the genus Gloeandromyces. Three of the new species are polymorphic; they have multiple morphotypes that grow in specific positions on the host integument: G. diversiformis f. diversiformis, f. musiformis, and f. vanillicarpiformis; G. plesiosaurus f. asymmetricus and f. plesiosaurus; and G. verbekeniae f. verbekeniae and f. inflexus. Finally, a dichotomous key to all species and morphotypes is presented.

KEYWORDS:

• Arthropod-associated fungi
• bat flies
• integrative taxonomy
• Laboulbeniomycetes
• nuclear ribosomal DNA
• polymorphism
• TEF1
• 9 new taxa

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Konstanze Bensch (Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute) for advice with the Code, Kanchi Gandhi (Harvard University Herbaria) for nomenclatural support, Joseph (Joey) R. Gerteisen (Purdue University) for his studies with bat fly specimens from Costa Rica, Genevieve E. Tocci (Farlow Herbarium of Cryptogamic Botany) for taking photographs of slides deposited at FH, participants of the #TeamLaboul meetings for valuable comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript, and two reviewers for critical suggestions that improved the paper.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

Unedited images, final alignments, and unedited tree are available through GitHub: https://github.com/dannyhaelewaters/teamlaboul/tree/main/gloeandromyces_paper. Newly generated sequences were submitted to the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) GenBank database (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/), under the following accession numbers: OQ117043, OQ969945–OQ969950, OQ971589–OQ971602, OQ971686–OQ971699.

Additional information

Funding

This study received support from the U.S. National Science Foundation (DEB-2127292 to C. W. Dick, DEB-2127291 to C. A. Quandt, and DEB-2127290 to D. Haelewaters). B. Santamaria received support from the Belgian American Educational Foundation in the form of a B.A.E.F. Graduate study Fellowship for the academic year 2021–2022. D. Haelewaters was supported by the Leopold III Fund (Belgium), the Mycological Society of America (2018 Forest Fungal Ecology Postdoctoral Award), and the Linnean Society of London and Systematics Association (2020 Systematics Research Fund award).