Lycogala fossiculatum Leontyev, C. Rojas, T. van der Heul, Kochergina & Schnittler, 2023

Song, Wen-Long, Jiang, Zi-Qiong, Li, Min, Leontyev, Dmytro, Gao, Yang & Chen, Shuang-Lin, 2025, Comprehensive revision of Lycogala (Myxomycetes) in subtropical China: morphological and phylogenetic insights and ten new species, IMA Fungus 16, pp. e 147535-e 147535 : e147535-

Lycogala fossiculatum Leontyev, C. Rojas, T. van der Heul, Kochergina & Schnittler , in Leontyev, Ishchenko & Schnittler, Mycologia 115 (4): 542 (2023)

Fig. 8

Specimen examined.

CHINA • Jiangsu Province: Zijin Mountain National Forest Park , 32.0622°N, 118.8761°E, on rotten wood, 18 Jul 2024, collected by Wen-Long Song, Ya-Jing Chen, and Qian Meng ( HFNNU 10817 ) . • Jiangxi Province: Guan Mountain National Nature Reserve , 28.5208°N, 114.6127°E, on rotten wood, 13 Sep 2024, collected by Xiao-Dong Liu and Yang Gao ( HFNNU 11190 ) ; • Guan Mountain National Nature Reserve , 28.5464°N, 114.6315°E, on rotten wood, 8 Aug 2024, collected by Xiao-Dong Liu and Yang Gao ( HFNNU 11191 ) .

Distribution.

Ukraine, Australia, Costa Rica ( Leontyev et al. 2023 b), Norway ( Johannesen and Vetlesen 2024), and China (this study).

Notes.

Lycogala fossiculatum is recorded in China for the first time. The main characteristics of this species are large and dark brown sporocarps, accreted peridial vesicles 20–50 μm in diameter, which are rounded, light brownish under TL, filled with spherical oil droplets, and light pinkish-gray or light salmon-gray fresh spore mass ( Leontyev et al. 2023 b). The specimens observed in this study showed slight differences from the original description: the oil droplets in the vesicles are smaller and pigmented with reddish tints, while the spore ornamentation looks somewhat denser (Fig. 8 K ). However, two-gene phylogenetic analysis (Fig. 2 ) showed that Chinese specimens ( HFNNU 10817 , HFNNU 11190 , and HFNNU 11191 ) cluster together with L. fossiculatum (CWP 4170, TWDH 552.0, USJ 7502, USJ 7513, and USJ 7518) with strong support (UBS = 100, PP = 1). Therefore, combining morphological characteristics and phylogenetic analysis (Fig. 2 ), we can identify our collections as L. fossiculatum .

Figures

Figure 2. Maximum likelihood tree inferred from the concatenated sequences of SSU and COI, showing the phylogenetic relationship of Lycogala. The members of Reticularia were used to root the tree. Only Maximum likelihood ultrafast bootstrap support (UBS) / Bayesian posterior probabilities (PP) ≥ 70 / 0.7 are shown. The voucher numbers are indicated after the species names. The number of identical genotypes is in parentheses (if present). The ten new species described in this study are indicated in red and bold. The four new species to China are indicated in blue and bold. Other newly obtained sequences are in bold. The scale bar represents the number of substitutions per site.

Figure 8. Morphological characteristics of Lycogala fossiculatum: A – C sporocarps; D the inner surface of the peridium (SEM); E the outer surface of the peridium; F peridial vesicles; G the bulbous free ends of the capillitium; H spores; I the bulbous free ends of the capillitium (SEM); J the detail of capillitium ornamentation (SEM); K spores (SEM). Scale bars: 1.5 mm (C); 1 mm (A, B, E); 100 μm (F); 10 μm (G, H, I); 5 μm (J); 2 μm (D); 1 μm (K).