IMA Fungus 10(1): e33862, doi: 10.1186/s43008-019-0017-3
Looks can be deceiving: the deceptive milkcaps (Lactifluus, Russulaceae) exhibit low morphological variance but harbour high genetic diversity
expand article infoLynn Delgat, Glen Dierickx‡, Serge De Wilde‡, Claudio Angelini, Eske De Crop‡, Ruben De Lange, Roy Halling§, Cathrin Manz|, Jorinde Nuytinck, Annemieke Verbeken‡
‡ Ghent University, Department of Biology, Research group Mycology, Ghent, Belgium§ Institute of Systematic Botany, The New York Botanical Garden, Bronx| University of Marburg, Faculty of Biology, Systematic Botany and Mycology, Marburg, Germany¶ Naturalis Biodiversity Centre, Leiden
© Lynn Delgat, Glen Dierickx, Serge De Wilde, Claudio Angelini, Eske De Crop, Ruben De Lange, Roy Halling, Cathrin Manz, Jorinde Nuytinck, Annemieke Verbeken.
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: Delgat L, Dierickx G, De Wilde S, Angelini C, De Crop E, De Lange R, Halling R, Manz C, Nuytinck J, Verbeken A (2019) Looks can be deceiving: the deceptive milkcaps (Lactifluus, Russulaceae) exhibit low morphological variance but harbour high genetic diversity. IMA Fungus 10(1): e33862. https://doi.org/10.1186/s43008-019-0017-3
Open Access
Abstract
The ectomycorrhizal genus Lactifluus is known to contain many species complexes, consisting of morphologically very similar species, which can be considered cryptic or pseudocryptic. In this paper, a thorough molecular study is performed of the clade around Lactifluus deceptivus (originally described by Peck from North America) or the deceptive milkcaps. Even though most collections were identified as L. deceptivus, the clade is shown to contain at least 15 species, distributed across Asia and America, indicating that the L. deceptivus clade represents a species complex. These species are morphologically very similar and are characterized by a tomentose pileus with thin-walled hyphae and a velvety stipe with thick-walled hyphae. An ITS1 sequence was obtained through Illumina sequencing for the lectotype of L. deceptivus, dating from 1885, revealing which clade represents the true L. deceptivus. In addition, it is shown that three other described species also belong to the L. deceptivus clade: L. arcuatus, L. caeruleitinctus and L. mordax, and molecularly confirmed that L. tomentoso-marginatus represents a synonym of L. deceptivus. Furthermore, two new Neotropical species are described: Lactifluus hallingii and L. domingensis.
Keywords
Basidiomycota, Russulales, Lactifluus sect. Albati, Taxonomy, Phylogeny, New taxa