Fungalpedia – Note 1563, Leptosphaeria
Leptosphaeria Ces. & De Not.
Index Fungorum, Facesoffungi, MycoBank, GenBank.
Classification: Leptosphaeriaceae, Pleosporales, Pleosporomycetidae, Dothideomycetes, Pezizomycotina, Ascomycota, Fungi
Saprobic or parasitic on stems and leaves of herbaceous or woody plants in terrestrial habitats. Sexual morph: see Sivanesan (1984), Hyde et al. (2013), Ariyawansa et al. (2015). Asexual morph: Conidiomata black, pycnidial, solitary to gregarious or confluent, superficial, globose to depressed globose, with a flattened base and cylindrical neck, unilocular, glabrous, ostiolate. Ostiole subcylindrical to irregular, centrally located. Conidiomatal wall composed of thick-walled, dark brown to brown then hyaline cells of textura globosa to textura. Conidiophores formed from the inner cavity of the conidiomata, reduced to conidiogenous cells or if present, hyaline, cylindrical, septate, branched, smooth-walled. Conidiogenous cells hyaline, enteroblastic, phialidic, ampulliform to subcylindrical, determinate, smooth-walled. Conidia hyaline, cylindrical to subcylindrical or ellipsoidal, unicellular, smooth, guttulate.
Notes: Sivanesan (1984) provided a full account of the taxonomy, biology, pathology and asexual morph of Leptosphaeria. Ariyawansa et al. (2015) evaluated the genus with molecular data and circumscribed Leptosphaeria sensu stricto to accommodate twelve species. The asexual morph of Leptosphaeria has been assigned to several genera, namely Coniothyrium Corda (Punithalingam l980, Sivanesan 1984), Diplodina Westend. (Holm 1957, Sivanesan 1984), Phaeoseptoria Speg., (Hughes 1949, Webster l955, Webster and Hudson 1957), Phoma Sacc. (Hudson 1960, Lucas and Webster 1967), Scolecosporiella Petr. (Müller 1953, Lucas and Webster 1967, Sutton 1980), Septoria Sacc. (Sutton and Waterson 1966, Sivanesan 1984), and Stagonospora (Sacc.) Sacc. (Müller 1950, Webster and Hudson 1957, Lucas and Webster 1967, Hsieh 1979). However, except for the phoma-like asexual morph, other genera have not been successfully linked with Leptosphaeria sensu stricto (de Gruyter et al. 2013, Ariyawansa et al. 2015). In this study, a fungus collected on Petasites sp. is morphologically and phylogenetically 100 % similar to L. sydowii, thus reprsenting an additional collection of L. sydowii. In addition, the sexual moph L. ebuli (MFLUCC 14 0828), which was described from Sambucus ebulus (Adoxaceae) by Liu et al. (2015), clustered with four strains of L. sydowii with 100MLBS/1BPP (Fig. 205). Therefore, this strain is regarded as the sexual morph of L. sydowii and L. ebuli is reduced to synonymy with L. sydowii, as the latter has priority.
Type species: Leptosphaeria doliolum (Pers.) Ces. & De Not., Comm. Soc. crittog. Ital. 1(fasc. 4): 234 (1863).
Other accepted species: Species Fungorum – search Leptosphaeria.
References
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.