Sparassis cystidiosa sp. nov. from Thailand is described using morphological and molecular data

Abstract

Sparassis cystidiosa, collected recently from a primary montane cloud forest in northern Thailand is described as new. It is distinct from all others species in the genus because of the presence of hymenial cystidia, relatively large basidiospores and flabellae composed of six distinct layers of tissue. Analyses of a combined dataset of DNA sequences from three genes support its distinction and suggest that the S. cystidiosa lineage is the sister group of all other Sparassis.

• Bayesian phylogenetics
• brown rot
• Homobasidiomycetes
• polyporoid clade
• rDNA
• rpb2

This work is supported in part by National Sciences Foundation Grants DEB-0118776 to Desjardin and DEB-9903835 to Hibbett. Desjardin is grateful to Dr Nigel Hywel-Jones, Thitiya Boonpratuang and Poramate Ruksawong from the National Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (BIOTEC), Bangkok, Thailand, and to Dr Egon Horak and Almut Horak, Geobotanical Institute ETH, Zürich, Switzerland, for their guidance and companionship in the field. We thank R.H. Petersen, D.H. Pfister, R.J. Bandoni, T. Hattori, P.M. Kirk, G. Ringer, Z.L. Yang, Helmut Besl, and the curators of CUP, FH, HKAS, HMAS, MBUH, BMS, TENN, and the herbaria in the University of Regensburg for providing specimens.