Lycogala chinense W. L. Song, Yang Gao, Leontyev & Shuang L. Chen, 2025

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 chinense W. L. Song, Yang Gao, Leontyev & Shuang L. Chen sp. nov.

Fig. 5

GenBank accession numbers.

PQ 685903 (SSU) and PQ 728369 (COI).

Etymology.

Chinense (Latin) Chinese, referring to the geographic origin of collections.

Diagnosis.

Differs from L. confusum by dark, thick-walled peridial vesicles, nearly solitary or clustered in small rows and bunches, containing large oil droplets and occasional crystals.

Description.

Sporocarps scattered, spherical, short horizontally oval, or somewhat irregular, 1.0– 3.5 mm in diameter. Peridium thin, membranous, light ochre to yellowish brown with olivaceous tones, densely covered with peridial vesicles. The inner surface of the peridium almost smooth, with scattered patches of wart, as seen in SEM. Peridial vesicles appear brown under RL, warm pale yellow to deep warm brown under TL, (45 –) 90–110 (– 165) μm in diameter, nearly solitary or clustered by 2–4, forming rows and bunch-like groups, somewhat deformed from mutual pressure. Crystals in vesicles occasionally present in the form of druses. Oil droplets present, large, often occupy half or more of the inner vesicle space. Capillitium with wavy and bracelet-like thickenings nearly invisible under TL, but more or less conspicuous under SEM, (5.0 –) 8.0–12 (– 22.1) μm in diameter, densely ornamented by pits and warts; capillitial free ends without conspicuous swellings. Spore mass in old collections yellow with ochraceous undertones or darker, hyaline under TL, (5.5 –) 6.5–7.0 μm in diameter, reticulate, with 4–5 meshes across diameter, unornamented area occupies 1 / 4–1 / 3 of the spore surface. Plasmodium unknown.

Distribution.

Currently known only from China.

Habitat.

On rotten wood.

Holotype.

CHINA • Jiangxi Province: Guan Mountain National Nature Reserve , on rotten wood, 28.5509°N, 114.6036°E, 29 Jun 2020, collected by Xiao-Dong Liu and Yang Gao ( HFNNU 11237 ).

Additional specimens examined.

CHINA • Henan Province: Baotianman National Nature Reserve , on rotten wood, 33.5190°N, 111.9470°E, 22 Jul 2016, collected by Yang Gao and Gao-Wei Wang ( MCCNNU 2788 ) ; • Jiangxi Province: Guan Mountain National Nature Reserve , 28.5588°N, 114.5998°E, on rotten wood, 29 Jun 2020, collected by Xiao-Dong Liu and Yang Gao ( HFNNU 11236 ) ; • Jinggang Mountain National Nature Reserve , 26.6625°N, 114.0844°E, on rotten wood, 18 Jul 2020, collected by Xiao-Dong Liu and Yang Gao ( HFNNU 11238 ) .

Notes.

According to our two-gene phylogeny (Fig. 2 ), this species is most closely related to L. confusum . Indeed, these two taxa share many similarities in peridial structure. In both species, the vesicles are filled with oil droplets, including relatively large ones, and form small rows or bunches, although in L. chinense the vesicles are often nearly solitary. However, the macromorphology of these two species differs noticeably. In L. chinense , the vesicles are dark brown and relatively large (up to 160 µm), situated against the light yellowish background of exposed peridium, forming a contrasting, speckled pattern. In contrast, L. confusum has smaller (up to 90 µm) and lighter vesicles, densely covering the orange-brown background, creating a “ marbled ” pattern ( Leontyev et al. 2023 b). L. chinense also resembles L. skovorodaense but differs in having much looser clustering of vesicles. Compared to both similar taxa, L. confusum and L. skovorodaense , the new species also differs by the occasional presence of crystals in peridial vesicles.

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 5. Morphological characteristics of Lycogala chinense: A – D sporocarp; E the out surface of the peridium; F, G peridial vesicles; H the inner surface of the peridium (SEM); I capillitium; J the bulbous free ends of capillitium (SEM); K capillitium; L the detail of capillitium ornamentation (SEM); M, N spores; O spores (SEM). Scale bars: 1 mm (F); 0.5 mm (A – D); 0.2 mm (D); 100 μm (G, K – N); 10 μm (H, I); 5 μm (J, O).