Fungalpedia – Note 1261, Acaroconium
Acaroconium Kocourk. & D. Hawksw.
Index Fungorum, Facesoffungi, MycoBank, GenBank, Fig 1
Classification: Incertae sedis, Incertae sedis, Incertae sedis, Incertae sedis, Pezizomycotina, Ascomycota, Fungi
Lichenicolous. Sexual morph: Undetermined. Asexual morph: Conidiomata pycnidial, single, or sometimes gregarious, immersed to partly erumpent, subglobose, black, ostiolate, with a distinctly thickened, ostiolar collar. Conidiomata wall composed of polyhedral angular pseudoparenchymatous cells. Conidiophores reduced to conidiogenous cells. Conidiogenous cells enteroblastic, not proliferating and lacking annellations, broadly short-ampulliform, apex with a periclinal thickened collar, hyaline. Conidia single, ellipsoid, rounded at both ends, aseptate, hyaline at maturity, becoming pale brown at maturity while inside the pycnidial cavity, smooth-walled (description modified from Kocourková and Hawksworth 2008).
Notes: Kocourková and Hawksworth (2008) introduced Acaroconium with
A. punctiforme as the type species. Acaroconium morphologically resembles Phoma sensu lato as both genera have conidiomata with a deeply pigmented region around the well-defined ostiole’ (Kocourková and Hawksworth 2008). However, Phoma species have hyaline conidia
(de Gruyter et al. 2009, 2013), while Acaroconium has brown conidia. The comparison of Acaroconium with other lichenicolous genera and taxonomic keys are provided under notes in Lichenoconium. Sequence data is unavailable, thus the taxonomic status is unknown.
Type species: Acaroconium punctiforme Kocourk. & D. Hawksw., Lichenologist 40(2): 105 (2008)
Figure 1 – Acaroconium punctiforme. a Vertical section of conidioma. b Conidia. Scale bars: a = 20 μm, b = 10 μm (re-drawn from Kocourková and Hawksworth 2008)
References
Wijayawardene et al., 2016