Four Endophytic Ascomycetes New to Korea: Cladosporium anthropophilum, C. pseudocladosporioides, Daldinia eschscholtzii, and Nigrospora chinensis

Dong Jae Lee¹ Jae Sung Lee¹ Hyang Burm Lee² Young-Joon Choi^1,*

¹Department of Biology, Kunsan National University, Gunsan 54150, Korea
²Department of Agricultural Biological Chemistry, Chonnam National University, Gwangju 61186, Korea

Abstract

Ascomycota is the largest phylum of the Fungi, including approximately 6,600 genera. They are often isolated from soils, indoor air, and freshwater environments, but also from plants as pathogens or endophytes. In this study, four species of Ascomycota (two of Cladosporium and one of each Daldinia and Nigrospora) were collected from the leaves of four woody plants (Camellia japonica, Ginkgo biloba, Quercus sp., Vitis vinifera). Their cultural characteristics were investigated on five different media (PDA, V8A, CMA, MEA, CZA) at 3 days after incubation at 25°C in darkness. BLASTn search and phylogenetic analysis were performed using the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) rDNA sequences, in addition to tef1 gene sequences for Cladosporium species. Based on the cultural, morphological, and phylogenetic data, the isolates were identified as Cladosporium anthropophilum, Cladosporium pseudocladosporioides, Daldinia eschscholtzii, and Nigrospora chinensis. Previously, some members of Cladosporium and Nigrospora have been recorded as endophytes inhabiting the leaves and stems of various plants, whereas Daldinia eschscholtzii is a wood-inhabiting endophyte or wood-decaying fungus. To our knowledge, this is the first report of these four ascomycetes in Korea.

Figures & Tables

Fig. 1. Phylogenetic tree of , pseudocladosporioides, and closely related species, inferred from translation elongation factor 1 ( α) sequences. The numbers at the nodes are the bootstrap values obtained from 1,000 replications. The Korean isolate presented in this study is indicated in red. The scale bar equals the number of nucleotide substitutions per site.