Four new species of Talaromyces section Talaromyces discovered in China

ABSTRACT

Four new Talaromyces species without any close relatives are reported here, namely, T. aureolinus (ex-type AS3.15865 ^T), T. bannicus (ex-type AS3.15862 ^T), T. penicillioides (ex-type AS3.15822 ^T), and T. sparsus (ex-type AS3.16003 ^T). Morphologically, T. aureolinus is unique in producing orange-yellow mycelium and gymnothecia, singly borne asci, and ellipsoidal, spiny ascospores. Talaromyces bannicus is characterized by the slow growth rate, polymorphic conidiophores, inconsistent stipe lengths, and pyriform to ellipsoidal, echinulate conidia. Talaromyces penicillioides is distinguished by good growth and sporulation on malt extract agar (MEA) and yeast extract sucrose agar (YES) media, resembling the colony appearances of certain Penicillium species, and appressed biverticillate and occasionally monoverticillate penicilli bearing globose to ellipsoidal, echinulate conidia. Talaromyces sparsus has wide, submerged colony margins with sparse aerial mycelium, and conidial areas overlaid with yellow-green, sterile hyphae on MEA medium. These four new species are well supported by individual phylogenetic trees based on β-tubulin (BENA), calmodulin (CALM), DNA-dependent RNA polymerase II second largest subunit (RPB2), and internal transcribed spacer region (ITS) gene sequences and the tree of the concatenated BENA-CALM-RPB2 sequence.

KEYWORDS:

• Molds
• morphology
• penicillia
• soil fungi
• 4 new taxa

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Yu-Hong Chen, Wei-Cheng Wang, Qi-Ming Wang, Yong-Shuan Gao, and Ze Liu for collecting soil samples.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant 31750001) and by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant QYZDY-SSW-SMC029).