Westerdykella globosa T. Ito & A. Nakagiri (1995)

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 globosa T. Ito & A. Nakagiri (1995)

Fig. 17

Description.

Sexual morph Cleistothecia clustered in submerged regions in PDA, 106–185 µm diam, globose to subglobose, dirty gray when immature, dark brown to black when mature. Asci subglobose to ovoid, hyaline when immature, greenish brown when mature, 32 - spored, edges slightly irregular due to crowding of mature ascospores, 26.9–40.2 µm × 20.8–29.8 µm (x ̄ = 32.7 × 24.5 µm, L / W ratio = 1.35, n = 30). Ascospores mostly globose, some subglobose, smooth, yellowish-brown, 1 to 2 guttules, 5.2–6.8 µm × 5.4–6.9 µm (x ̄ = 6.1 × 5.9 µm, L / W ratio = 1.03, n = 50). Asexual morph undetermined.

Culture characteristics.

Colony reaching 50 mm diam with slightly diffused edge, predominantly creamy white and partly fluffy, with only the cleistothecia cluster region turning dark brown.

Material examined.

TAIWAN • Guanshan Township , Taitung County, 23°02'14.8"N, 121°11'22.6"E, serpentine soil in rice field, 3 rd November 2022, K. W. Cheng, living culture NTUPPMCC 22-243 to 247 .

Notes.

Preussia globosa was synonymized under Westerdykella globosa by Ito (1995). This species has been reported from various environments, including soil from a stream bank and stored wheat grains in India ( Rai and Tewari 1963; Kumari et al. 2019), paddy soil in Japan ( Ito and Nakagiri 1995), and soil cultivated with Ganoderma lucidum in China ( Zaheer et al. 2024). Our study recovered five strains ( NTUPPMCC 22-243 – 247) that clustered in a strongly supported clade (100 % / 1.00) with the ex-type strain of W. globosa ( IFO 32588 ) ( Rai and Tewari 1963), confirming their identity as W. globosa (Fig. 13 ). The strains isolated in the present study share similar morphologies with W. globosa in producing globose, brown mature ascospores. Notably, consistent with previous studies, only the sexual stage was observed for strains identified as W. globosa in the present study. However, it is worthy to note that the asci of our strains are larger than previously reported (27–40 µm × 21–30 µm versus 20–24 µm × 14–17 µm) (Fig. 17 ; Ito and Nakagiri 1995). This is the first report of Westerdykella globosa 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 17. Morphology of Westerdykella globosa NTUPPMCC 22-246. A, B 14 - days-old colony on PDA; C Ascomata; D Immature ascomata; E Squashed ascomata; F, G Immature asci; H Ascus; I Ascospores. Scale bars: 0.1 mm (C); 50 µm (D); 20 µm (F – H); 10 µm (I).