Welcome to IMC 2018 International Mycological Congress
Conference Calendar
Discovering fungal hot spots through the MyCoPortal
- A. Miller
- S. Bates
- T. Iturriaga
Abstract
Abstract
The Symbiota biodiversity data management system is utilized by hundreds of natural history collections to serve biodiversity data online. These collections are organized into 40 portals which serve ~37 million specimen records of algae, bryophytes, fungi, invertebrates, lichens, plants and vertebrates. Specimen records can be linked to images, tissues samples, DNA sequence data, species information, as well as biotic inventories. A core goal of the Symbiota platform is to build a library of web-tools for documenting species occurrences (i.e., from specimens or observations) and for visualizing and analyzing biodiversity data. The Mycology Collections Portal (MyCoPortal) was created in 2011 to serve non-lichenized fungal data online, and is an easy to use, inexpensive, online resource for fungaria to maintain and serve their fungal collections data. There are currently over 3.6 million records in the MyCoPortal from 80 institutions throughout the world, predominately from North America, but also including 236,000 records representing over 47,000 species from Latin America. The MyCoPortal allows access to important fungal diversity and distribution information, and enables discovery of underexplored areas, biodiversity hot spots, as well as biogeographical patterns. Finally, it provides the big data required for documenting changes in fungal distributions over time.
Diversity in Pezizomycetes and Orbiliomycetes with a case study
- D. Pfister
Abstract
Abstract
When thinking about hot spots for fungal diversity we often focus on specific geographical regions. Such is the case with this symposium where assumptions are made regarding diversity in tropical areas being greater than in temperate areas of the world. My purpose is to think more broadly about ecology and evolution as drivers of diversity and how we might target some specific fungal groups for our studies. Drawing on several examples from work in our laboratory on the Pezizomycetes and Orbiliomycetes some of the patterns of richness will be discussed. Many of Pezizomycetes and Orbiliomycetes provide examples of high diversity that reflect patterns that diverge from expectations suggested by the assumptions about tropical richness. Hosts, ecologies and hidden diversity all factor into the perception of diversity. A case study in the genus Cookeina, assumed to be well known around the tropical world, will be presented as an example of overlooked diversity and assumptions about the patterns of occurrences of these fungi. In this genus some species show a high degree of geographic range but others are widespread in tropical areas. Under a single name a number of species have been amalgamated that have proven to be independent species. Issues related to the need for more extensive field work, better documentation and attention to biogeographical patterns will be discussed. Molecular phylogenetic studies and ancestral reconstruction have helped to elucidate these patterns.
What happened to Phoma?
- P. Crous
- L. Hou
- L. Cai
- J. Groenewald
Abstract
Abstract
The Didymellaceae is the largest family in the Pleosporales (Dothideomycetes), with more than 5400 taxon names listed in MycoBank. It includes three main genera, namely Ascochyta, Didymella and Phoma, and several allied phoma-like genera. Although the genus Phoma includes more than 3000 taxa, DNA data presently suggests that it could be monotypic, and that all taxa other than the type need to be allocated elsewhere. Many species have been linked to different sexual morphs, which in turn have also been shown to be poly- and paraphyletic. As part of an ongoing study we are revising the taxonomy of Didymellaceae on the basis of multi-locus DNA sequence data including partial beta-tubulin, ITS, LSU and DNA-directed RNA polymerase II second largest subunit gene sequences. In the present study, we investigated 112 Didymellaceae isolates newly obtained from 64 host plant species in 38 plant families, and various substrates. Based on these results, we presently accept 33 genera in the family. Of these, seven genera are newly described, while Heracleicola (= Ascochyta), and Neodidymella (= Boeremia), Didymellocamarosporium (= Neomicrosphaeropsis), are reduced to synonymy. Although our understanding of the systematics of Didymellaceae is much improved, the placement and delimitation of several genera still await to be clarified.
DNA-barcoding of rust fungi collected on Berberis host species from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, and Uruguay
- S. Hambleton
- Q. Eggertson
- C. Barnes
- M. Ordoñez
- P. Campos
- R. Gandullo
- J. Martinelli
- M. Chaves
- R. Madariaga
- S. Germán
- T. Fetch
Abstract
Abstract
A three year study was initiated in 2016 between Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and collaborators in five South American countries to collect rust fungi occurring on Berberis species and generate DNA-barcode data for these fungi and their associated host species. There are approximately 80 rust fungus names on Berberis hosts reported in the USDA National Fungus-Host Distributions Database on-line but only a handful are represented by DNA sequences in GenBank. About half of those names were reported from South America, which is one of two centers of diversity for the genus. The role of Berberis in the life cycles of Puccinia graminis (stem rust) and P. striiformis (stripe rust) has received much attention, but little is known about the susceptibility of South American Berberis to these cereal rust species. The objectives of the study were two-fold: 1. Generate DNA barcode sequences and morphological descriptions for the diversity of Berberis species and their rusts collected in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, and Uruguay; 2. Determine the pathotype of any P. graminis collections that were viable. In this presentation we report on the results for the first objective for year one. Forensic DNA extraction and standard DNA-barcoding protocols were used to generate ITS-28S sequences for the rusts, and rbcL and ITS sequences for the infected and uninfected Berberis plant hosts. A small number of rust-infected Berberis specimens were available and sampled from the Canadian National Mycological Herbarium in Ottawa (DAOM) to generate reference DNA barcodes for comparison. DNA sequences were aligned with reference sequences for the cereal rusts and other species suggested by in-house and GenBank BLASTn searches and were analyzed using neighbour-joining and PHYML methods. Twenty-four rust infected and forty-six uninfected Berberis collections were processed. DNA was extracted from collections with obvious rust infections (none from Uruguay) and all other uninfected collections from all five countries. None of the rusts were identified as P. graminis or P. striiformis. Some collections from Ecuador matched data previously published for Edythea quitensis. The Brazil collections were close to our new reference sequences for Puccinia meyeri-albertii from a DAOM herbarium specimen collected in Argentina in 1922. This species has been reported from Brazil, Chile and Argentina on several Berberis species. The rest of the rust collections were unidentified, and form separate clades from sequences for named reference specimens. The analyses suggested that anywhere from eight to thirteen species were collected, depending on how the analyses are interpreted. The rbcL and ITS sequences for Berberis were used to help confirm host identifications and assign provisional names to those that were unidentified.