Westerdykella capitulum J. de Gruyter, M. M. Aveskamp & J. Z. Groenewald (2012)

Cheng, Kai-Wen, Yang, Jiue-in, Srimongkol, Piroonporn, Stadler, Marc, Karnchanatat, Aphichart & Ariyawansa, Hiran A., 2025, Fungal frontiers in toxic terrain: Revealing culturable fungal communities in Serpentine paddy fields of Taiwan, IMA Fungus 16, pp. e 155308-e 155308 : e155308-

Westerdykella capitulum J. de Gruyter, M. M. Aveskamp & J. Z. Groenewald (2012)

Fig. 14

Description.

Sexual morph undetermined. Asexual morph Conidiomata 95–198 µm, globose, subglobose to irregular due to fusion of two or more, glabrous, dark brown, ostiolate, mostly superficial, some submerged in PDA. Conidia borne terminally in camel brown gelatinous mass, ellipsoidal, some globose, smooth, hyaline, 1 to 2 guttules, 3.0–4.1 µm × 2.4–3.4 µm (x ̄ = 3.5 × 2.8 µm, L / W ratio = 1.3, n = 50.

Culture characteristics.

Colony exhibit rapid growth, reaching 90 mm daim with a uniform surface and smooth margins, forming a concentric pattern. The central region appears light grayish-brown due to dense conidiomata, while the edges exhibit a translucent beige hue.

Material examined.

TAIWAN • Wanrung Township , Hualien County, 23°42'40.3"N, 121°24'48.2"E, serpentine soil in rice field, 2 nd November 2022, K. W. Cheng, living culture NTUPPMCC 22-253 and NTUPPMCC 22-254 .

Notes.

Westerdykella capitulum has been reported from various environments, including saline soil in India ( Pawar et al. 1967), root of motherwort ( Leonurus cardiaca ) in Poland ( Zimowska 2007), and mudflat in Korea (Genomic data) ( Heo et al. 2019). In our study, two strains ( NTUPPMCC 22-253 and 22-254) were recovered and clustered in a strongly supported clade (99 % / 1.00) with reference strains CBS 354.65 and CBS 355.65 , confirming their identity as W. capitulum (Fig. 13 ). Morphological characters of the representative strain of W. capitulum NTUPPMCC 22-253 used in this study are similar to W. capitulum reported by de Gruyter et al. (2012). Similar to previous studies, only the asexual stage was observed for strains identified as W. capitulum in the present study (Fig. 14 ; Pawar et al. 1967; de Gruyter and Noordeloos 1992; Zimowska 2007). This is the first report of W. capitulum in Taiwan.

Figures

Figure 13. Maximum likelihood (ML) phylogenetic tree based on a concatenated dataset of ITS, LSU, and tub 2. In total, 56 strains representing 17 taxa were included in the concatenated dataset, with 2314 characters (ITS 459 bp, LSU 865 bp, and tub 2 990 bp) including alignment gaps. The tree was rooted with Preussia funiculata Huhndorf 2577 and P. typharum CBS 107.69. MLB ≥ 70 % and BPPs ≥ 0.95 were shown at each node; values lower than these thresholds are indicated by a hyphen (–). The scale bar indicates the number of estimated substitutions per site. The strains introduced in this study are in red and novel species are in bold. The ex-type strains are marked with T.

Figure 14. Morphology of Westerdykella capitulum NTUPPMCC 22-253. A, B 14 - days-old colony on PDA; C Conidiomata; D Squashed conidiomata; E Ostiolate; F Conidia. Scale bars: 0.2 mm (C) 20 µm; (D, E); 10 µm (F).