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Abstract
During an investigation of saprobic microfungi in leaf litter from an Australian rainforest, five new species of Thozetella, namely T. acerosa, T. boonjiensis, T. falcata, T. gigantea and T. queenslandica, were identified and these are described and illustrated here. The morphology of specimens derived from cultures grown under different conditions and from natural substrata was compared. DNA sequence data of ITS regions within nuclear rDNA confirmed the morphological species concept and indicated that Thozetella species are anamorphs of the ascomycete genus Chaetosphaeria.
We gratefully acknowledge these institutions for financing this project: the Centre for Research of Fungal Diversity at the Department of Ecology and Biodiversity; The University of Hong Kong; the Cooperative Research Centre for Rain-forest Ecology and Management; and the School of Tropical Biology, James Cook University. Kylie McKenzie (Trinity Anglican School, Cairns) contributed to the assessment of cultures under different growing conditions as part of a student research scheme. B.P. thanks N. Tucker for access to one of the collection sites, C. Pearce and I. Steer for their company on collection trips, H. Leung for providing support with photography, M. Harrington for advice on phylogenetic analysis and useful comments on the manuscript and L. Jones and M. Pye for assistance with technical aspects. We especially thank R. Castañeda Ruiz for sharing his taxonomic knowledge and experience. Two anonymous reviewers are thanked for their valuable comments.
