Five new species of the obligate mycoparasite Syncephalis (Zoopagales, Zoopagomycotina) from soil

Abstract

More than 520 soil samples were surveyed for species of the mycoparasitic zygomycete genus Syncephalis using a culture-based approach. These fungi are relatively common in soil using the optimal conditions for growing both the host and parasite. Five species obtained in dual culture are unknown to science and are described here: (i) S. digitata with sporangiophores short, merosporangia separate at the apices, simple, 3–5 spored; (ii) S. floridana, which forms galls in the host and has sporangiophores up to 170 µm long with unbranched merosporangia that contain 2–4 spores; (iii) S. pseudoplumigaleta, with an abrupt apical bend in the sporophore; (iv) S. pyriformis with fertile vesicles that are long-pyriform; and (v) S. unispora with unispored merosporangia. To facilitate future molecular comparisons between species of Syncephalis and to allow identification of these fungi from environmental sampling datasets, we used Syncephalis-specific PCR primers to generate internal transcribed spacer (ITS) sequences for all five new species.

Key words:

• Absidia
• culture
• Cunninghamella
• merosporangium
• Mortierella
• Mucor
• mycoparasite
• Umbelopsis
• zygospores

Acknowledgments

Financing was provided by National Science Foundation grant DEB-1441677 (to MES) and the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS) at the University of Florida. The authors would like to thank Dr James W. Kimbrough (UF Department of Plant Pathology), Mr Richard E. Cullen (UF Plant Disease Clinic), and Mr Frank Woods, (UF Nematode Assay Clinic and Department of Entomology) for collecting and forwarding soils used in this study, and Mr S.C. Chuang (Department of Science Education, National Taipei University of Education, Taiwan) for collecting soil and isolating S. pyriformis.