Morphological and molecular characterization of the new aethaloid species Didymium yulii

ABSTRACT

Five specimens, initially presumed to be Fuligo septica or Mucilago crustacea, were collected from Jilin Province and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in China, but all five turned out to represent a new aethaloid species, Didymium yulii. This new species is characterized by pseudocapillitia without capillitia and an aethalioid fruiting body, features that are morphologically distinct from those of any other species of Didymium. To assess the phylogenetic relationships between D. yulii and other members of Didymium and in the Didymiaceae, sequences from two nonoverlapping targeted portions of nuc 18S rDNA (~450 bp and ~1050 bp) and translation elongation factor 1-alpha (tef1) were obtained and analyzed. The results indicate that D. yulii forms a single clade separate from other species of Didymium and the clade that contains M. crustacea, which strongly supports the identification of the five specimens as a new species.

KEYWORDS:

• Amoebozoa
• Myxogastrea
• Physarales
• tef1
• 1 new taxon

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank Prof. Harold W. Keller for his suggestions and revisions of the manuscript and thank the reviewers and editors who made suggestions and improvements to earlier versions of the manuscript. We are also grateful for the assistance of Dr. Ling Su and Dr. Bo Zhang in using the scanning electron microscope.

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Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a Natural Science and Technology Foundation Project (grant number 2014FY210400), by 111 Project (grant number D17014), and by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 31400013).