TY - JOUR
T1 - New species of aquatic chytrids from Oman
AU - Hassett, Brandon T.
AU - Al-Shaibi, Badriya K.
AU - Al-Nabhani, Abdulrahman
AU - Al-Sadi, Abdullah M.
N1 - Funding Information:
Brandon T. Hassett is supported by the United States Fulbright Scholar program, as part of the “Illustrated Field Guide to Fungi of Oman” project. The authors thank Sultan Qaboos University for partial support of the study. William Davis completed the ML phylogenetic analysis for the manuscript and provided interpretation, and we thank him for this major contribution. We thank the executive editor, P. B. Matheny, and associate editor, J. Stajich, for edits and suggestions that improved earlier versions of the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Mycological Society of America.
PY - 2020/7/3
Y1 - 2020/7/3
N2 - Oman is a desert country in the south of the Middle East. Springs and other water sources that harbor aquatic organisms can be separated by hundreds of kilometers. In Oct 2019, we isolated four freshwater aquatic fungi (Chytridiomycota) from benthic detritus baited with pine pollen on a general nutrient medium near Salalah, Oman. Database queries of nuc 28S rRNA (28S) and internal transcribed spacer region ITS1-5.8S-ITS2 (ITS) revealed that one of these strains was Dinochytrium kinnereticum, a recently described algal pathogen from the Sea of Galilee. The other three strains had low molecular identity to available ITS sequences. These unknown strains varied in size and released endogenously swarming zoospores through papillae from mature zoosporangia. Zoospore ultrastructure was consistent with described species in the Rhizophydiales, and molecular phylogenetic results grouped these three strains into a clade in the genus Rhizophydium. We circumscribe these three strains as a sp. nov., thereby expanding the diversity within Rhizophydium described as the new species R. jobii. In doing so, we provide the first report of Chytridiomycota from Oman.
AB - Oman is a desert country in the south of the Middle East. Springs and other water sources that harbor aquatic organisms can be separated by hundreds of kilometers. In Oct 2019, we isolated four freshwater aquatic fungi (Chytridiomycota) from benthic detritus baited with pine pollen on a general nutrient medium near Salalah, Oman. Database queries of nuc 28S rRNA (28S) and internal transcribed spacer region ITS1-5.8S-ITS2 (ITS) revealed that one of these strains was Dinochytrium kinnereticum, a recently described algal pathogen from the Sea of Galilee. The other three strains had low molecular identity to available ITS sequences. These unknown strains varied in size and released endogenously swarming zoospores through papillae from mature zoosporangia. Zoospore ultrastructure was consistent with described species in the Rhizophydiales, and molecular phylogenetic results grouped these three strains into a clade in the genus Rhizophydium. We circumscribe these three strains as a sp. nov., thereby expanding the diversity within Rhizophydium described as the new species R. jobii. In doing so, we provide the first report of Chytridiomycota from Oman.
KW - 1 new taxon
KW - Chytridiomycota
KW - Middle East
KW - Rhizophydium
KW - zoospore
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U2 - 10.1080/00275514.2020.1761226
DO - 10.1080/00275514.2020.1761226
M3 - Article
C2 - 32529931
AN - SCOPUS:85087012039
SN - 0027-5514
VL - 112
SP - 781
EP - 791
JO - Mycologia
JF - Mycologia
IS - 4
ER -