Crucellisporiopsis
Crucellisporiopsis Nag Raj, Can. J. Bot. 60(12): 2601 (1983)
Leotiomycetes, Leotiomycetidae, Helotiales, Lachnaceae
Saprobic on the host plant in terrestrial habitat. Sexual morph: undetermined. Asexual morph: Conidiomata stromatic, variable from acervular to sprodochia or synnematous, solitary to gregarious, superficial, erumpent, gelatinous. Conidiomatal wall well developed, composed of a basal wall of textura angularis with relatively thick-walled, hyaline cells, and an excipulum of textura prismatica to textura intricata with thick-walled, hyaline cells. Conidiophores arising in the cavity of the conidiomata, hyaline, septate, branched, smooth-walled, branches terminating in conidiogenous cells and sterile hyphae. Sterile hyphae hyaline, filamentous, unbranched in the base, blunt, irregularly coiled in the apical part, septate. Conidiogenous cells hyaline, cylindrical to subcylindrical, discrete or integrated, indetermined, smooth-walled. Conidia hyaline, four or five radiate, smooth; main axis cylindrical to subcylindrical, 0–1-septate, narrowed and truncate at base, straight or slightly curved, cells unequal, smooth-walled, guttulate, bearing a tubular, unbranched, attenuated appendage; arms three or four, inserted at different loci at the apex of the main axis and separated from it by septa, divergent, attenuated, euseptate, unequal.
Type species: Crucellisporiopsis gelatinosa Nag Raj, Can. J. Bot. 60(12): 2605 (1983) [1982]
Notes: Nag Raj (1982) accepted two taxa, C. cymbionoides Nag Raj collected from unidentified twigs of a tree in Venezuela, and C. gelatinosa Nag Raj collected from decaying leaves of Weinmannia racemosa in New Zealand. Brubacher et al. (1984) described third species C. prolongata Brub., Rawla & R. Sharma. The fourth species C. marquesiae Crous was added by Crous et al. (2014c) mainly based on the dimensions of its central axis, and lateral radiating arms.
Crucellisporiopsis can be confused with Crucellisporium M.L. Farr and Eriosporella Höhn., because all possess four or five radiate conidia with a 0–1-septate main axis bearing 2–5 divergent arms at the point of succession (Nag Raj 1993). The significant difference between Crucellisporiopsis and Eriosporella is that Eriosporella lacks sterile hyphae at the conidiomatal margin. Crucellisporiopsis has annellidic conidogenous cells while in Crucellisporium they are holoblastic-sympodial (Nag Raj 1982, 1993, Diederich et al. 2001). Crous et al. (2014c) showed that Crucellisporiopsis was related to Hyaloscyphaceae (Helotiales) based on LSU and ITS sequence, but the type species was not included. Ekanayaka et al. (2019) placed Crucellisporiopsis in Lachnaceae. In our study, the type specimen of C. prolongata and one deposited as C. gelatinosa in DAOM were re-examined. Of interest is that C. prolongata has synnematous conidiomata, while C. gelatinosa has acervular conidiomata. Because of the lack of molecular sequence, C. prolongata was maintained as a separate species in Crucellisporiopsis. Once epitypes of these two species are designated, it will be possible to confirm if they are congeneric.
Distribution: India, New Zealand, Zambia (Nag Raj 1993, Crous et al. 2014c, this study).
Li WJ, McKenZie EHC, Liu JK, Bhat DJ, Dai DQ, Caporesi E, Tian Q, Maharachcikumbura SSN, Luo ZL, Shang QJ, Zhang JF, Tangthirasunun N, Karunarathna SC, Xu JC, Hyde KD (2020) Taxonomy and phylogeny of hyaline-spored coelomycetes. Fungal Diversity 100: pages279–801.
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