IMA Fungus 10(1): e33847, doi: 10.1186/s43008-019-0021-7

Diversity of xerotolerant and xerophilic fungi in honey

Alberto M. Stchigel, A. M. Stchigel^‡, A. Terrab^§, J. Guarro^‡, J. F. Cano-Lira^‡

‡ Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), Mycology Unit, Medical School and IISPV, Tarragona, Spain§ University of Seville, Department of Plant Biology and Ecology, Seville, Spain

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: Stchigel AM, Stchigel AM, Terrab A, Guarro J, Cano-Lira JF (2019) Diversity of xerotolerant and xerophilic fungi in honey. IMA Fungus 10(1): e33847. https://doi.org/10.1186/s43008-019-0021-7

Abstract

Fungi can colonize most of the substrata on Earth. Honey, a sugary food produced by bees (and other insects) has been studied little in terms of its fungal diversity. We have surveyed and evaluated the presence of xerotolerant and xerophilic fungi in a set of honey bee samples collected from across Spain. From 84 samples, a total of 104 fungal strains were isolated, and morphologically and phylogenetically characterized. We identified 32 species distributed across 16 genera, most of them belonging to the ascomycetous genera Aspergillus, Bettsia, Candida, Eremascus, Monascus, Oidiodendron, Penicillium, Skoua, Talaromyces and Zygosaccharomyces. As a result of this survey, eight new taxa are proposed: i.e. the new family Helicoarthrosporaceae, two new genera, Helicoarthrosporum and Strongyloarthrosporum in Onygenales; three new species of Eurotiales, Talaromyces affinitatimellis, T. basipetosporus, and T. brunneosporus; and two new species of Myxotrichaceae, Oidiodendron mellicola, and Skoua asexualis.

Keywords

Eurotiales, Fungi, Honey, New taxa, Onygenales, Osmophiles, Xerophiles