Fungalpedia – Note 2041, Piedraiaceae

 

Piedraiaceae. Viégas ex Cif., Bat. & Camposa.

Citation when using this data: Hongsanan S et al. 2020 – Fungalpedia, Ascomycota.

Index Fungorum, Facesoffungi, MycoBank, GenBank

Classification: Capnodiales, Dothideomycetidae, Dothideomycetes, Pezizomycotina, Ascomycota, Fungi

 

Pathogenic on human hair. Sexual morph: Ascostroma with pseodoparenchymatic tissue, vary in size and shape. but usually flat, elongated and with a rough surface, dark in colour, multi-loculate in section, containing numerous cavities, irregularly distributed throughout. Each locule becomes erumpent as the asci mature, and can be visible as a small dimple, and contains a single ascus. Pseudostiolate locules, without pseudoparaphyses, with paraphysoids. Asci 8-spored, bitunicate, subglobose to broadly ellipsoidal. Ascospores overlapping, fusiform, curved, more or less straight to falcate, tapering towards both ends, hyaline, rarely light yellowish or greenish, aseptate, thin-walled, with tapering gelatinous appendages or without appendages. Germination by several germ tubes (Ciferri et al. 1956, von Arx & Müller 1975, Eriksson 1981, Liu 2011). Asexual morph: Undetermined. 

Notes – Piedraiaceae was described by Ciferri et al. (1956) under Myriangiales. Piedraiaceae consists of only one genus Piedraia recorded in tropical regions with two species, P. hortae the type species and P. quintanilhae. Piedraia hortae (sexual morph) is a superficial keratinolytic parasite on human hair, known as “black piedra”. The asexual morph of P. hortae is undetermined. Phylogenetic analyses indicated that Piedraia hortae is closely related to Mycosphaerella (Lindemuth et al. 2001, Selbmann et al. 2005). Multi-gene analysis of Dothideomycetes (Schoch et al. 2006) included Paedraiaceae under Capnodiales. Crous et al. (2009c) provided sequence data of four strains of Piedraia hortae (CBS 276.32, CBS 374.71, CBS 375.71, and CBS 480.64) and P. quintanilhae (CBS 327.63). They found that Piedraiaceae clustered within Teratosphaeriaceae with high bootstrap support (>95 % MLBS). Thus, Crous et al. (2009c) treated Piedraia under Teratosphaeriaceae. This result is the same as in Chomnunti et al. (2014) and this study. However, Teratosphaeriaceae mostly contains plant pathogens. Thus, Piedraiaceae is retained until more evidence is available to resolve its taxonomic placement.

 

Type genus: Piedraia Fonseca & Leão.

Other accepted species: Species Fungorum – search Piedraiaceae.

 

References

Chomnunti P, Hongsanan S, Aguirre-Hudson B, Tian Q et al. 2014 – The sooty moulds. Fungal Diversity 66, 1–36.

Ciferri R, Batista AC, Campos CA. 1956 – Taxonomy of Piedraia hortai and systematic position of the Piedraiaceae family. Publicações do Instituto de Micologia da Universidade do Recife 45, 1–9.

Crous PW, Schumacher RK, Wood AR, Groenewald JZ. 2019c – The Genera of Fungi – G5: Arthrinium, Ceratosphaeria, Dimerosporiopsis, Hormodochis, Lecanostictopsis, Lembosina, Neomelanconium, Phragmotrichum, Pseudomelanconium, Rutola, and Trullula. FUSE 5, 77–98.

Eriksson OE. 1981 – The families of bitunicate ascomycetes. Nordic Journal of Botany 1, 800.

Lindemuth R, Wirtz N, Lumbsch HT. 2001 – Phylogenetic analysis of nuclear and mitochondrial rDNA sequences supports the view that loculoascomycetes (Ascomycota) are not monophyletic. Mycological Research 105, 1176–1181.

Liu D. 2011 – Piedraiain molecular detection of human fungal pathogens. CPC press, pp 958

Schoch CL, Shoemaker RA, Seifert KA, Hambleton S et al. 2006 – A multigene phylogeny of the Dothideomycetes using four nuclear loci. Mycologia 98 1041–1052.

Selbmann L, De Hoog GS, Mazzaglia A, Friedmann EI, Onofri S. 2005 – Fungi at the edge of life: cryptoendolithic black fungi from Antarctic desert. Studies in Mycology 51, 1–32.

von Arx JA, Müller E. 1975 – A re-evaluation of the bitunicate Ascomycetes with keys to families and genera. Studies in Mycology 9, 1–159.

 

Entry by

Sinang Hongsanan, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory for Plant Epigenetics, Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Microbial Genetic Engineering, College of Life Science and Oceanography, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, People’s Republic of China, Center of Excellence in Fungal Research, Mae Fah Luang University, Chiang Rai 57100, Thailand, Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology, Faculty of Agriculture, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai 50002, Thailand

 

Published online 23 March 2026

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