Venturia species form sooty mold-like colonies on leaves of Salix: introducing Venturia fuliginosa sp. nov

Venturiales

Members of Venturiales (Dothideomycetes) are widely distributed, and comprise saprobes, as well as plant, human and animal pathogens. In spite of their economic importance, the general lack of cultures and DNA data has resulted in taxa being poorly resolved. In the present study five loci, ITS, LSU rDNA, tef1, tub2 and rpb2 are used for analysing 115 venturialean taxa representing 30 genera in three families in the current classification of Venturiales. Based on the multigene phylogenetic analysis, morphological and ecological characteristics, one new family, Cylindrosympodiaceae, and eight new genera are described, namely Bellamyces, Fagicola, Fraxinicola, Fuscohilum,Neofusicladium, Parafusicladium, Pinaceicola and Sterila. In addition, 12 species are described as new to science, and 41 new combinations are proposed. The taxonomic status of 153 species have been re-evaluated with 20 species excluded from Venturiales. Based on this revision of Venturiales, morphological characteristics such as conidial arrangement (solitary or in chains) or conidiogenesis (blastic-solitary, sympodial or annellidic), proved to be significant at generic level. Venturia as currently defined represents a generic complex. Furthermore, plant pathogens appear more terminal in phylogenetic analyses within Venturiaceae and Sympoventuriaceae, suggesting that the ancestral state of Venturiales is most likely saprobic.

Airborne microbial biodiversity and seasonality in Northern and Southern Sweden

Microorganisms are essential constituents of ecosystems. To improve our understanding of how various factors shape microbial diversity and composition in nature it is important to study how microorganisms vary in space and time. Factors shaping microbial communities in ground level air have been surveyed in a limited number of studies, indicating that geographic location, season and local climate influence the microbial communities. However, few have surveyed more than one location, at high latitude or continuously over more than a year. We surveyed the airborne microbial communities over two full consecutive years in Kiruna, in the Arctic boreal zone, and Ljungbyhed, in the Southern nemoral zone of Sweden, by using a unique collection of archived air filters. We mapped both geographic and seasonal differences in bacterial and fungal communities and evaluated environmental factors that may contribute to these differences and found that location, season and weather influence the airborne communities. Location had stronger influence on the bacterial community composition compared to season, while location and season had equal influence on the fungal community composition. However, the airborne bacterial and fungal diversity showed overall the same trend over the seasons, regardless of location, with a peak during the warmer parts of the year, except for the fungal seasonal trend in Ljungbyhed, which fluctuated more within season. Interestingly, the diversity and evenness of the airborne communities were generally lower in Ljungbyhed. In addition, both bacterial and fungal communities varied significantly within and between locations, where orders like Rhizobiales, Rhodospirillales and Agaricales dominated in Kiruna, whereas Bacillales, Clostridiales and Sordariales dominated in Ljungbyhed. These differences are a likely reflection of the landscape surrounding the sampling sites where the landscape in Ljungbyhed is more homogenous and predominantly characterized by artificial and agricultural surroundings. Our results further indicate that local landscape, as well as seasonal variation, shapes microbial communities in air.

Genera of phytopathogenic fungi: GOPHY 1

Genera of Phytopathogenic Fungi (GOPHY) is introduced as a new series of publications in order to provide a stable platform for the taxonomy of phytopathogenic fungi. This first paper focuses on 21 genera of phytopathogenic fungi: Bipolaris, Boeremia, Calonectria, Ceratocystis, Cladosporium, Colletotrichum, Coniella, Curvularia, Monilinia, Neofabraea, Neofusicoccum, Pilidium, Pleiochaeta, Plenodomus, Protostegia, Pseudopyricularia, Puccinia, Saccharata, Thyrostroma, Venturia and Wilsonomyces. For each genus, a morphological description and information about its pathology, distribution, hosts and disease symptoms are provided. In addition, this information is linked to primary and secondary DNA barcodes of the presently accepted species, and relevant literature. Moreover, several novelties are introduced, i.e. new genera, species and combinations, and neo-, lecto- and epitypes designated to provide a stable taxonomy. This first paper includes one new genus, 26 new species, ten new combinations, and four typifications of older names.