Two new European species of Melanoleuca (Fungi, Agaricales) with comments on the M. graminicola group

Abstract

Melanoleuca is one of the taxonomically most complicated genera of Agaricomycetes. The aim of this study is a taxonomic revision of European specimens confused with M. angelesiana A.H. Sm. and a delimitation of four species, M. brachyspora Harmaja, M. graminicola (Velen.) Kühner & Maire, M. rufipes Bon and M. stridula (Fr.) Singer. The research is based on macro- and micromorphological characters and the multigene phylogenetic analyses of a combined (ITS, rpb2, and tef1) dataset. According to the results, two new species are proposed: M. monticola sp. nov. accommodating European specimens previously confused with the species M. angelesiana from America and M. romanensis sp. nov. from Italy. Moreover, American specimens identified as M. angelesiana belong to three different phylogenetic species (M. angelesiana sensu typi, M. acystidiata aff., and one more separate lineage). M. graminicola is emended and the respective epitype designated. An identification key to the European species of subg. Urticocystis is provided.

Key words:

• Agaricomycetes
• ITS
• rpb2
• subg. Urticocystis
• systematics
• tef1

Acknowledgements

The studies of V.A. and H.Š. were made possible by the support provided to the Moravian Museum by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic as part of its long-term conceptual development programme for research institutions (DKRVO, ref. MK000094862). The research of T.K. and M.T. was supported by the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports and the European Regional Development Fund, financing the Project Phytophthora Research Centre Reg. No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/15_003/0000453. The research by O.Ď. was supported by VEGA Scientific Grant Agency, project VEGA 1/0749/21. We thank Jan W. Jongepier (Veselí nad Moravou, Czech Republic) for linguistic revision of the text. We also thank the curators of the ANC, H, LIP, MPU, PC, PRM, and SLO herbaria for loans of type and other specimens, and S. Adamčík (Slovakia), M.T. Basso (Italy), M. Beran (Czech Republic), J. Borovička (Czech Republic), F.-X. Boutard (France), M. Caboň (Slovakia), R. Ejrnaes (Denmark), H. Forstinger (Austria), S. Glejdura (Slovakia), L. Hagara (Slovakia), A. Hausknecht (Austria), J. Holec (Czech Republic), H. Huijser (the Netherlands), D. Janda (Czech Republic), O. Jindřich (Czech Republic), V. Kautman (Slovakia), S. Komínková (Czech Republic), J. Novotný (Czech Republic), P. Kešeľák (Slovakia), E. Suarez (Spain), M. Vašutová (Czech Republic), and A. Verbeken (Belgium) for providing their collections for our studies and our herbaria. R.P. also thanks his friend Roberto Fontenla for collaboration in the study of this genus. The authors further wish to thank Roman Plichta (Mendel University Brno, Czech Republic), for assistance with the SEM microphotography of the basidiospores.

Disclosure statement

The authors report that there are no competing interests to declare and they have no financial interests.

Data availability

The data generated and analysed during the current study are available from the NCBI repository.

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article can be accessed here: https://doi.org/10.1080/14772000.2023.2218375

Associate Editor: Prof Elliot Shubert