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Apiospora rasikravindrae KUC21327. (a) Colonies on PDA, (b) MEA, and (c) OA (top). (d) Colonies on PDA, (e) MEA, and (f) OA (low), (g-h), conidia under SEM, (i-k) conidia attached conidiogenous cells. Scale bar ¼ 10 lm.
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Although Apiospora Sacc. has previously been considered a sexual morph of Arthrinium species on the basis of phylogenetic, morphological, and ecological diagnoses, a recent study delimited these as different species. Recently, 14 species, including eight new species, of marine Arthrinium have been reported from Korea. Six known species have previou...
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Citations
... The morphological similarities between the two genera (Apiospora and Arthrinium) make it difficult to determine the boundary between them by morphological methods alone. Morphologically, most of the conidia of Apiospora are nearly spherical in the front and lenticular at the side, and sometimes the conidia develop into pinholes, and the conidia of Arthrinium vary in shape (angular, spherical, curved, boat-shaped, fusiform, polygonal), with some species having thick black intervals [12][13][14][15]. ...
... Ecologically, Apiospora is widely distributed in subtropical, tropical, temperate and even cold regions, including Africa, America, Asia, Australia, and Europe, according to reported data [13,15]. As endophytes, plant pathogens and humus, Apiospora is ubiquitous in a wide range of terrestrial environments, such as soil, atmosphere and even marine substrates, but its main hosts are still plants, especially Poaceae [60]. ...
Apiospora is widely distributed throughout the world, and most of its hosts are Poaceae. In this study, Arthrinium-like strains were isolated from non-Poaceae in the Hainan and Fujian provinces of China. Based on the combined DNA sequence data of the internal transcriptional spacer (ITS), partial large subunit nuclear rDNA (LSU), translation extension factor 1-α gene (TEF1-α) and β-tubulin (TUB2), the collected Apiospora specimens were compared with known species, and three new species were identified. Based on morphological and molecular phylogenetic analyses, Apiospora adinandrae sp. nov., A. bawanglingensis sp. nov. and A. machili sp. nov. are described and illustrated.
... It was not until the study by Pintos, Á. & P. Alvarado [12] that they were clarified as separate genera based on genetic, ecological, and morphological evidence. This delineation was confirmed and supported by subsequent studies [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. Evidence of genome draft was employed within the fungal group Arthrinium/Apiospora for the first time, which also supported them into two separate genera [21]. ...
... Currently, 157 epithets under the genus Apiospora are listed in Index Fungorum (September 2023), while 116 epithets are listed in Species Fungorum. Out of these, molecular data have confirmed 91 Apiospora species [12][13][14][15][17][18][19][20]22]. ...
Endophytic fungi isolated from medicinal ferns serve as significant natural resources for drug precursors or bioactive metabolites. During our survey on the diversity of endophytic fungi from Dicranopteris species (a genus of medicinal ferns) in Guizhou, Apoiospora was observed as a dominant fungal group. In this study, seven Apiospora strains, representing four new species, were obtained from the healthy plant tissues of three Dicranopteris species—D. ampla, D. linearis, and D. pedata. The four new species, namely Apiospora aseptata, A. dematiacea, A. dicranopteridis, and A. globosa, were described in detail with color photographs and subjected to phylogenetic analyses using combined LSU, ITS, TEF1-α, and TUB2 sequence data. This study also documented three new hosts for Apiospora species.
... Apiospora is a cosmopolitan fungus, reported from various sources such as plants, soil, air, and marine samples in tropical, subtropical, Mediterranean, temperate, and even cold regions [3]. Moreover, they have been characterized as endophytes, saprobes, and plant pathogens (especially in Poaceae) [4][5][6][7]. Morphologically, Apiospora is characterized by globose, subglobose to ellipsoid, oval, and obovoid conidia when observed in face view, lenticular in side view, and basauxic conidiogenous cells [3]. The genus Apiospora has been observed to have Arthrinium-like morphs in the asexual state and is thus synonymized under Arthrinium species [4,8,9]. ...
... The genus Apiospora has been observed to have Arthrinium-like morphs in the asexual state and is thus synonymized under Arthrinium species [4,8,9]. However, differences in genetic, morphological, and ecological characteristics between the two genera were found by Pintos et al. [3]; 76 species of Arthrinium have been synonymized under Apiospora, and the two genera have been completely separated [3,6,10]. ...
... arundinis and Ap. camelliae-sinensis) [5,6,15,17,18]. ...
Many Apiospora species have been isolated from bamboo plants – to date, 34 bambusicolous Apiospora species have been recorded. They are known as saprophytes, endophytes, and plant pathogens. In this study, 242 bambusicolous Apiospora were isolated from various bamboo materials (branches, culms, leaves, roots, and shoots) and examined using DNA sequence similarity based on the internal transcribed spacer, 28S large subunit ribosomal RNA gene, translation elongation factor 1-alpha, and beta-tubulin regions. Nine Apiospora species (Ap. arundinis, Ap. camelliae-sinensis, Ap. hysterina, Ap. lageniformis sp. nov., Ap. paraphaeosperma, Ap. pseudohyphopodii sp. nov., Ap. rasikravindrae, Ap. saccharicola, and Ap. sargassi) were identified via molecular analysis. Moreover, the highest diversity of Apiospora was found in culms, and the most abundant species was Ap. arundinis. Among the nine Apiospora species, two (Ap. hysterina and Ap. paraphaeosperma) were unrecorded in Korea, and the other two species (Ap. lageniformis sp. nov. and Ap. pseudohyphopodii sp. nov.) were potentially novel species. Here, we describe the diversity of bambusicolous Apiospora species in bamboo organs, construct a multi-locus phylogenetic tree, and delineate morphological features of new bambusicolous Apiospora in Korea.
... For instance, A. kogelbergensis causes the blight disease of Schizostachyum [13], A. sacchari causes the damping-off of durum wheat (Triticum durum) [14], and A. xenocordella causes fruit blight on pistachio (Pistacia vera) [15]. Apiospora shows a cosmopolitan distribution in diverse substrates, including air [4,16], soil [4,[16][17][18], freshwater [19], marine environments [20][21][22][23][24][25], lichens [26], insect guts [27], and human tissues [3,[28][29][30]. Interestingly, some species (e.g., A. arundinis, A. sacchari) have been reported as a source of useful bioactive compounds, such as antifungal agents and enzymes [21,22,31], possessing great potential for their commercial applications in the pharmaceutical industries. ...
... Thus, morphological characteristics integrated with molecular phylogeny have been widely accepted to distinguish Apiospora species [3][4][5][6][7][8][9]12,17,[36][37][38][39]. Presently, 117 epithets are recognized in Apiospora [40], comprising 76 Arthrinium species, which were synonymized under Apiospora [2,12,25]. The taxonomic position of other taxa, which lack sequencing information and comprehensive morphological descriptions, remain uncertain and require further study. ...
... The sequences generated by this study were supplemented with the related taxa resulting from the nucleotide blast search in GenBank (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast/, accessed on 1 September 2022) and recent publications [2,12,25,39,48,49] (Table 1). The matrix of consensus sequences was aligned using MAFFT v. 7.475 on the web portal (http: //mafft.cbrc.jp/alignment/server/index.html) ...
Taxonomic studies of bambusicolous fungi in China and Thailand have resulted in the collection of three fascinating saprobic coelomycetes strains. Morphology coupled with combined gene analysis of ITS, LSU, TUB2, and TEF1-α DNA sequence data showed that they belong to the genus Apiospora, family Apiosporaceae. A new species from Thailand, Apiospora mukdahanensis, and new records of A. locuta-pollinis from China are herein described. In addition, based on both morphological data coupled with phylogenetics and nomenclatural analyses, A. mori is proposed as a new combination. Maximum likelihood, maximum parsimony and Bayesian analyses were performed to clarify the phylogenetic affinities of the species obtained in this study. Newly obtained strains are compared with morphologically- and phylogenetically-related taxa. The comprehensive descriptions, illustrations, and updated phylogeny are provided and discussed for intra-and intergeneric relationships within Apiospora species
Monocotyledons are one of the important groups of flowering plants that include
approximately 60,000 species with economically important crops including coconut (Cocos nuciferanucifera), pineapple (Ananas comosus comosus), and rice (Oryza sativa sativa). Studies on these hosts are mainly focused on pathogenic fungi; only a f ew saprobic species have been reported. This study investigated the saprobic ascomycetes associated with coconut, pineapple, and rice in southern China and northern Thailand. Approximately 200 specimens were collected, and 100 fungal strains were isolated and identified to 77 species based on phylogenetic approaches and morphological characteristics. Among the 77 species, 29, 38, and 12 were found on coconut, pineapple, and rice, respectively, distributed in Dothideomycetes (41), Eurotiomycetes (one), and S ordariomycetes (35). Pseudomycoleptodiscus , Pseudosaprodesmium Pseudosetoseptoria, Pseudostriatosphaeria and
Pseudoteichospora are introduced as new genera and Anthostomella cocois, Apiospora ananas, Chromolaenicola ananasi, Epicoccum yunnanensis, Exserohi lum ananas, Hypoxylon cocois, Lasiodiplodia ananasi, Muyocopron chiangraiense, Myrmecridium yunnanense, Occultitheca ananasi, Periconia chiangraiensis, Placidiopsis ananasi, Pseudomycoleptodiscus ananas, Pseudosaprodesmium cocois, Pseudosetoseptoria oryzae, Pseudostriatosphaeria chiangraiensis,
Pseudoteichospora thailandensis, Savoryella chiangraiensis, Savoryella cocois, and Tetraploa oryzae are introduced as novel species. In addition, 51 species are reported as new hosts or geographical records, and six species are reported as new collections. Pseudopithomyces pandanicola and P. palmicola are synonymized under P. chartarum, P. diversisporus synonymized under P. atro olivaceus based on phylogenetic analyses and morphological characteristics.
Moreover, comprehensive checklists of fungi associated with coconut, pineapple, and rice are also provided.
Apiospora, an ascomycetous genus in Apiosporaceae, comprises saprobes, endophytes, and pathogens of humans and plants. They have a cosmopolitan distribution with a wide range of hosts reported from Asia. In the present study, we collected and isolated Apiospora species from Wurfbainia villosa and grasses in Guangdong and Yunnan provinces in China. Multi-locus phylogeny based on the internal transcribed spacer, the large subunit nuclear rDNA, the partial translation elongation factor 1-α, and β-tubulin was performed to clarify the phylogenetic affinities of the Apiospora species. Based on the distinctive morphological characteristics and molecular evidence, Ap. endophytica, Ap. guangdongensis, Ap. wurfbainiae, and Ap. yunnanensis are proposed. Descriptions, illustrations, and notes for the newly discovered species are provided and compared with closely related Apiospora species. An updated phylogeny of Apiospora is presented, along with a discussion on the phylogenetic affinities of ambiguous taxa.
The genus Apiospora includes endophytes, pathogens and saprobes, with a wide host range and geographic distribution. In this paper, six Apiospora strains isolated from diseased and healthy tissues of bamboo leaves from Hainan and Shandong provinces in China were classified using a multi-locus phylogeny based on a combined dataset of ITS, LSU, tef1 and tub2 , in conjunction with morphological characters, host association and ecological distribution. Two new species, Apiospora dongyingensis and A. hainanensis , and a new record of A. pseudosinensis in China, are described based on their distinct phylogenetic relationships and morphological analyses. Illustrations and descriptions of the three taxa are provided, along with comparisons with closely related taxa in the genus.
