Lobosporangium, a new name for Echinosporangium Malloch, and Gamsiella, a new genus for Mortierella multidivaricata

Abstract

Lobosporangium is proposed as a new name for Echinosporangium Malloch, a later homonym of Echinosporangium Kylin. Lobosporangium transversale was isolated from arid soils on three occasions between 1964 and 1968 but has not been reported again. Observations on sporangium development in culture revealed rapid sporangiospore germination, rapidly growing hyphae forming anastomoses, threefold dichotomously branching aerial sporangiophores and formation of clusters of eight sporangia. The sporangia of L. transversale are illustrated, and the placement of Lobosporangium in the Mortierellaceae is discussed. A new genus, Gamsiella, is proposed that is based on Mortierella multidivaricata. Sporangial ontogeny of Gamsiella is compared with that presented here for Lobosporangium.

• Echinosporangium
• Gamsiella
• Lobosporangium
• Mortierella
• Mortierellaceae
• Mortierellales
• sporangium
• Zygomycetes

We would like to thank Drs. J.W. Kimbrough and D.J. Mitchell for reviewing the manuscript and Dr. C. J. Alexopoulos, who edited a part of this manuscript that was a student project by MB for his mycology course. We thank Dr. John Krug for letting us examine the type specimen of Echinosporangium transversale Malloch (TRTC 43983). We are extremely grateful to Dr. Kerry O'Donnell for letting us include one of his unpublished SEM micrographs (Fig. 12) in this paper. This research was supported by the Florida Agricultural Experiment Station, and it was approved forPUBLICation as Journal Series R-08825.