Pleosporales » Melanommataceae

Melanomma

Melanomma Nitschke ex Fuckel

Index Fungorum number: IF 3070

 

Saprobic or parasitic on wood and bark in terrestrial and freshwater habitats. Sexual morph: Ascomata gregarious, immersed, erumpent to nearly superficial, uniloculate, globose to subglobose, conical, often laterally flattened, black, coriaceous, often puckered or sulcate, with ostiolate papilla. Peridium two-layered, arranged in textura angularis, outer layer comprising small, heavily pigmented, thick-walled cells, inner layer comprising of hyaline to lightly pigmented, thin-walled cells. Pseudoparaphyses dense, trabeculate, filamentous, hyaline, indistinctly septate, branching and rarely anastomosing above the asci. Asci 8-spored, bitunicate, fissitunicate, cylindrical to fusoid, with a short pedicel, apically rounded with an ocular chamber. Ascospores uniseriate, fusoid, pale brown to brown, septate, the second cell from the apex slightly wider than the others, smooth-walled (Tian et al. 2015). Asexual morph: Coelomycetous. Conidiomata superficial, globose, black, ostiolate. Mycelium immersed. Peridium two-layered. Conidiophores cylindrical, septate, hyaline. Conidiogenous cells phialidic, hyaline, smooth. Conidia cylindrical or ellipsoidal, hyaline, aseptate (Sutton 1980).

 

Type species: Melanomma pulvis-pyrius (Pers.) Fuckel

 

Notes: As the holotype of Melanomma pulvis-pyrius was not validly designated, a neotype and epitype were designated (Holm 1957; Zhang et al. 2008). Melanomma pulvis-pyrius clustered with an asexual morphic species Aposphaeria populina Died., but they are not recognized as congeneric until the type species of Aposphaeria is obtained (Tian et al. 2015). The freshwater species M. australiense K.D. Hyde & Goh normally has larger ascospores than other Melanomma species (Hyde and Goh 1999). The phylogenetic placement of M. australiense needs confirmation by molecular data.

 

List of freshwater Melanomma species

Melanomma australiense K.D. Hyde & Goh, Nova Hedwigia 68(1–2): 256 (1999)

Freshwater distribution: Australia (Hyde and Goh 1999; Vijaykrishna and Hyde 2006)

 

References

Holm L (1957) Études taxonomiques sur les Pléosporacées. Symbolae Botanicae Upsaliensis 14:1–188

Hyde KD, Goh TK (1999) Tropical Australian Freshwater Fungi. XVI. Some new melanommataceous fungi from woody substrata and a key to genera of lignicolous loculoascomycetes in freshwater. Nova Hedwigia 68:251–272

Sutton BC (1980) The Coelomycetes. Fungi imperfecti with pycnidia, acervuli and stromata. Commonwealth Mycological Institute, Surrey, England

Tian Q, Liu JK, Hyde KD, Wanasinghe DN, Boonmee S, Jayasiri SC, Luo ZL, Taylor JE, Phillips AJL, Bhat DJ (2015) Phylogenetic relationships and morphological reappraisal of Melanommataceae (Pleosporales). Fungal Divers 74:267–324

Zhang Y, Fournier J, Pointing SB, Hyde KD (2008b) Are Melanomma pulvis-pyrius and Trematosphaeria pertusa congeneric. Fungal Divers 33:47–60

 

Recent Genus

1
Neochlamydotubeufia
Neohelicomyces

Recent Species

Neohelicomyces submersus
Neohelicomyces hyalosporus
Neohelicomyces grandisporus