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Dryad

A monograph of Aspergillus section Candidi

Cite this dataset

Glässnerová, Kateřina et al. (2022). A monograph of Aspergillus section Candidi [Dataset]. Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.3j9kd51mq

Abstract

Aspergillus section Candidi encompasses white- or yellow-sporulating species mostly isolated from indoor and cave environments, food, feed, clinical material, soil and dung. Their identification is non-trivial due to largely uniform morphology. This study aims to re-evaluate the species boundaries in the section Candidi and present an overview of all existing species along with information on their ecology. For the analyses, we assembled a set of 113 strains with diverse origin. For the molecular analyses, we used DNA sequences of three house-keeping genes (benA, CaM and RPB2) and employed species delimitation methods based on a multispecies coalescent model. Classical phylogenetic methods and genealogical concordance species recognition approaches were used for comparison. Phenotypic studies involved comparisons of macromorphology on four cultivation media, seven micromorphological characters and growth at temperatures ranging from 10 to 45 °C. Based on our results, all currently accepted species gained further support, while two new species are proposed (A. magnus and A. tenebricus). In addition, we proposed the new name A. neotritici to replace an invalidly described A. tritici. The revised section Candidi now comprises nine species, some of which manifest a high level of intraspecific genetic and/or phenotypic variability (e.g. A. subalbidus and A. campestris) while others are more uniform (e.g. A. candidus or A. pragensis). The growth rates on different media and at different temperatures, colony colours, production of soluble pigments, stipe dimensions and vesicle diameters contributed the most to species differentiation.

Funding

Charles University, Award: GAUK 140520

Ministry of Health, Award: NU21-05-00681

Charles University, Award: 204069

Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Award: 20F20772