IMA Fungus 8(1): 28-47, doi: 10.5598/imafungus.2017.08.01.03

New species of Tulasnella associated with terrestrial orchids in Australia

Celeste C. Linde^‡, Tom W. May, Ryan D. Phillips^‡, Monica Ruibal^‡, Leon M. Smith^‡, Rod Peakall^‡

‡ The Australian National University, Ecology and Evolution, Research School of Biology, Canberra, Australia

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC 4.0), which permits to copy and distribute the article for non-commercial purposes, provided that the article is not altered or modified and the original author and source are credited.

Citation: Linde CC, May TW, Phillips RD, Ruibal M, Smith LM, Peakall R (2017) New species of Tulasnella associated with terrestrial orchids in Australia. IMA Fungus 8(1): 28-47. https://doi.org/10.5598/imafungus.2017.08.01.03

Abstract

Recent studies using sequence data from eight sequence loci and coalescent-based species delimitation methods have revealed several species-level lineages of Tulasnella associated with the orchid genera Arthrochilus, Caleana, Chiloglottis, and Drakaea in Australia. Here we formally describe three of those species, Tulasnella prima, T. secunda, and T. warcupii spp. nov, as well as an additional Tulasnella species associated with Chiloglottis growing in Sphagnum, T sphagneti sp. nov. Species were identified by phylogenetic analyses of the ITS with up to 1.3 % sequence divergence within taxa and a minimum of 7.6 % intraspecific divergence. These new Tulasnella (Tulasnellaceae, Cantharellales) species are currently only known from orchid hosts, with each fungal species showing a strong relationship with an orchid genus. In this study, T. prima and T. sphagneti associate with Chiloglottis, while T. secunda associates with Drakaea and Caleana, and T. warcupii associates with Arthrochilus oreophilus.

Keywords

host specificity, ITS sequencing, orchid mycorrhizas, species delimitation