Dacrymycetes

Fungalpedia – Note 3310, Dacrymycetes

 

Dacrymycetes Doweld, Prosyllabus Tracheophytorum, Tentamen Systematis Plantarum Vascularium (Tracheophyta) (Moscow): LXXVIII (2001).

Citation when using this data: Wijayawardene NN et al. 2024 – Fungalpedia.

Index Fungorum, Faceoffungi, MycoBank, GenBank, Fig 1, 2.

Classification: Agaricomycotina, Basidiomycota, Dikarya, Fungi.

Sexual morph: Basidiomata scattered or gregarious, coalesced, displaying a wide variation in size and shape, pustulate to pulvinate or subglobose, cylindrical, subulate, rugose pilei, palmate, stipitate-pileate or sessile, strikingly long bisterigmate (forked) holobasidia, pale yellow to yellow, orange, olive, reddish brown to dark reddish brown, firm-gelatinous or soft-cartilaginous (Hibbett et al. 2007), except Unilacryma unispora (Shirouzu et al. 2013). Hymenium amphigenous, producing numerous basidia. Basidia 1–3-spored, bearing a loop-like basal clamp connection; apex frequently U-shaped, sometimes Y-shaped dacrymycete, and more rarely with an apical protuberance, bearing elliptical aseptate spores at the apices of these basidia (Zamora and Ekman 2020). Basidiospores 0–1-septate (exceptionally 3-septate), thin-walled, hyaline, cylindric-allantoid. Spore prints whitish. Basidia and basidiospores with or without conspicuous lipid drops when old. Hyphae densely branching and frequently anastomoses, with a loop-like basal clamp attachment. Brownish intracellular and diffuse parietal pigments often visible in some cortical/marginal hyphae. Asexual morph: Asexual fructifications are prevalent in Dacrymyces stillatus; however, infrequent or absent in other members of the Dacrymycetes. Fragmenting hyphae typically manifest in asexual fructifications but may also occur sporadically in basidiocarps (Oberwinkler 2014).

Life modes and distribution: The members of Dacrymycetes occur worldwide (Brasfield 1938; Shirouzu et al. 2016, 2017), and are reported as brown-rot fungi (Worrall et al. 1997), and some have been reported to degrade considerable amounts of lignin (Seifert 1983). Gene contents from two Calocera genomes also suggest a brown-rotting lifestyle (Nagy et al. 2016), and Dacrymycetes are the clade with the oldest stem age among Basidiomycota wood decomposers (e.g. Pseudotsuga spp., Pinus spp., Juniperus spp., Fagaceae, Nothofagaceae, Myrtaceae, Podocarpaceae, and Araucariaceae). The ancestors of this class and the Agaricomycetes appear to have separated during the upper Devonian or Carboniferous periods (Garnica et al. 2016; Varga et al. 2019). 

Notes: Doweld (2001) introduced the class Dacrymycetes, one of the three widely accepted classes of phylum Basidiomycota. Worrall et al. (1997) provided a comprehensive background of the classification of these typically brown-rot fungi, and Dacrymycetes are the clade with the oldest stem age among Basidiomycota wood decomposers (Oberwinkler 1994; Kirk et al. 2008; Floudas et al. 2012). According to Wijayawardene et al. (2022a), the class comprises two orders, four families, and twelve genera.

About 400 published species names, but many of these names are synonyms, at least 120 reported species have been identified (Savchenko et al. 2021). However, predicting from recent studies that the real number of species is certainly larger, probably over 200 (Savchenko et al. 2021). Except Unilacryma unispora, which contains unisterigmate basidia, members of the class may be easily differentiated from other basidiomycetes by their bisterigmate Y-shaped basidia (Wells 1994; Shirouzu et al. 2013). Dacrymycetes are distinguished by dolipore septa with imperforate parenthesomes, or rarely with a single pore on an ultrastructural level (Maekawa 1987; Oberwinkler 1994; Shirouzu et al. 2013). In terms of macromorphology, the class is dominated by “jelly fungi” with pustulate-pulvinate, cupulate, dendroid, and spathulate basidiocarps coloured with carotenoids in various yellow and orange colours (Goodwin 1953; Czeczuga 1980; Zamora and Ekman 2020). As a result, they have been used as taxonomic characters both in Ascomycota (Eckblad 1968; Schumacher 1990; Baral 2004) and Basidiomycota (Arpin and Fiasson 1971; Olariaga et al. 2015; Zamora and Ekman 2020). Shirouzu et al. (2017) provided the most complete phylogeny in terms of included vouchers with both DNA data and morphological data from fruitbodies. Some of the provisionally recognized species were found to be polyphyletic or to have extremely lengthy branches within their clade, indicating that there is significant sequence variation. Zamora and Ekman (2020) provided multi loci phylogeny of the class Dacrymycetes and revealed five lineages that putatively represent five different families, four of which were previously accepted and named.

He et al. (2024) recognized only one order Dacrymycetales in Dacrymycetes. 

Type Order: Dacrymycetales Henn., in Engler & Prantl, Nat. Pflanzenfam., Teil. I (Leipzig) 1(1**): 96 (1897) [1900].

Type family: Dacrymycetaceae J. Schröt. [as ‘Dacrymycetini’], in Cohn, Krypt. – Fl. Schlesien (Breslau) 3.1(25–32): 399 (1888).

Type genus: Dacrymyces Nees [as ‘Dacryomyces’], Syst. Pilze (Würzburg): 89 (1816) [1816-17].

Type species: Dacrymyces stillatus Nees, Syst. Pilze (Würzburg): 89 (1816) [1816-17].

Other accepted species: Species Fungorum – search Dacrymycetes.

Figure 1 – Basidiocarps of Dacrymycetales. No scale bar, modified from Oberwinkler (2012), and Oberwinkler et al. (2014).

 

Figure 2 – Micromorphological characters of Dacrymycetales. a-d Basidiospores. e Terminal cells of cortical/marginal hyphae, branched and gelatinised in Dacryonaema Macnabbii. f Bisterigmate basidia in Dacrymyces estonicus. g Unisterigmate basidium in Unilacryma unispora. h Hyphidia, simple in Dacrymyces ovisporus. Modified from Zamora and Ekman (2020). Scale bars: a,c = 5 μm, b,d-h= 10 μm. 

 

References

Arpin N, Fiasson J-L. 1971 – The pigments of Basidiomycetes: their chemo-taxonomic interest. In: Petersen RH (ed) Evolution in the higher basidiomycetes, University of Tennessee Press, USA, pp 63–98.

Baral HO. 2004 – The European and North-American species of Sarcoscypha.

Brasfield TW. 1938 – The Dacrymycetaceae of temperate North America. The American Midland Naturalist 20:211–235.

Czeczuga B. 1980 – Badania nad karotenoidami u grzybów. IX. Dacrymycetaceae. Acta Mycol 16:115–120.

Doweld AB. 2001 – Prosyllabus tracheophytorum. In: Tentamen systematis plantarum vascularium (Tracheophyta). Geos, Moscow.

Eckblad FE. 1968 – The genera of the operculate Discomycetes. A re-evaluation of their taxonomy, phylogeny and nomenclature. Nytt Magasin for Botanikk 15:1–191.

Floudas D, Binder M, Riley R, Barry K et al. 2012 – The Paleozoic origin of enzymatic lignin decomposition reconstructed from 31 fungal genomes. Science 336:1715–1719.

Garnica S, Riess K, Schön ME, Oberwinkler F et al. 2016 – Divergence times and phylogenetic patterns of Sebacinales, a highly diverse and widespread fungal lineage. PLoS ONE 11:e0149531.

Goodwin TW. 1953 – Studies in carotenogenesis 8. The carotenoids present in the basidiomycete Dacryomyces stillatus. Biochem J 53:538–540.

He MQ, Cao B, Liu F, Boekhout T et al. 2024 – Phylogenomics, divergence times and notes of orders in Basidiomycota. Fungal Divers.

Hibbett DS, Binder M, Bischoff JF, Blackwell M et al. 2007 – A higher level phylogenetic classification of the fungi. Mycol Res 111(5):509–547.

Kirk PM, Cannon PF, Minter DW, Stalpers JA et al. 2008 – Ainsworth & Bisby’s dictionary of the fungi, 10th edn. CABI, Wallingford, pp 439.

Maekawa N. 1987 – A new species of the genus Cerinomyces. Canad J Bot 65:583–588.

Oberwinkler F. 1994 – Genera in a monophyletic group: the Dacrymycetales. Mycologia Helvetica 6:35–72.

Oberwinkler F. 2014 – Dacrymycetes. In: McLaughlin DJ, Spatafora JW (eds) Systematics and evolution, Part A 2nd edn, Berlin, pp 357–372.

Olariaga I, Buyck B, Esteve-Raventós F, Hofstetterd V et al. 2015 – Assessing the taxonomic identity of white and orange specimens of Cantharellus: occasional colour variants or independent species? Cryptogam Mycolog 36:287–301.

Savchenko A, Zamora JC, Shirouzu T, Spirin V et al. 2021 – Revision of Cerinomyces (Dacrymycetes, Basidiomycota) with notes on morphologically and historically related taxa. Stud Mycol 99(1):100117.

Schumacher T. 1990 – The genus Scutellinia. Pyronemataceae. Opera Botanica 101:1–107.

Seifert KA. 1983 – Decay of wood by the Dacrymycetales. Mycologia 75:1011–1018.

Shirouzu T, Hirose D, Oberwinkler F, Shimomura N et al. 2013 – Combined molecular and morphological data for improving phylogenetic hypotheses in Dacrymycetes. Mycologia 105:1110–1125.

Shirouzu T, Hosaka K, Nam KO, Weir BS et al. 2017 – Phylogenetic relationships of eight new Dacrymycetes collected from New Zealand. Persoonia 38(1):156–69.

Shirouzu T, Uno K, Hosaka K, Hosoya T et al. 2016 – Early-diverging wood-decaying fungi detected using three complementary sampling methods. Mol Phylogenet Evol 98:11–20.

Varga T, Krizsán K, Földi C, Dima B et al. 2019 – Megaphylogeny resolves global patterns of mushroom evolution. Nat Ecol Evol 3:668–678.

Wells K. 1994 – Jelly fungi then and now! Mycologia 86:18–48.

Wijayawardene NN, Hyde KD, Dai DQ, Sánchez-García M et al. 2022a – Outline of Fungi and fungus-like taxa – 2021. Mycosphere 13:53–453.

Worrall J, Anagnost S, Zabel RA. 1997 – Comparison of wood decay among diverse lignicolous fungi. Mycologia 89:199–219.

Zamora JC, Ekman S. 2020 – Phylogeny and character evolution in the Dacrymycetes, and systematics of Unilacrymaceae and Dacryonaemataceae fam. nov. Persoonia 44(1):161–205.

 

Entry by

Nalin N. Wijayawardene, Center for Yunnan Plateau Biological Resources Protection and Utilization, College of Biological Resource and Food Engineering, Qujing Normal University, Qujing, Yunnan 655011, P.R. China, Tropical Microbiology Research Foundation, 96/N/10, Meemanagoda Road, 10230 Pannipitiya, Sri Lanka, Department of Bioprocess Technology, Faculty of Technology, Rajarata University, Sri Lanka

 

Published online 2 October 2026

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