Dothideomycetes » Dothideomycetes, genera incertae sedis

Otthia

Otthia Nitschke ex Fuckel, Jb. nassau. Ver. Naturk. 23-24: 169 (1870) [1869-70].

 Index Fungorum number: IF 3656; Facesoffungi number: FoF 12350, 1 morphological species (Species Fungorum 2022), no molecular data available.

Saprobic on dry twigs of Spiraea. Sexual morph: Ascostromata pseudothecia, immersed, or erumpent through bark fissures, gregarious to densely crowded, dark to black, short-stalked, globose or subglobose, with or without an ostiole. Ostiole central, short, slightly sunken, inconspicuous at the surface, reddish brown to dark brown. Peridium composed of cells of textura angularis. Hamathecium comprising numerous, filiform, hyaline, septate, hypha-like pseudoparaphyses. Asci 8-spored, bitunicate, cylindrical, with rounded apex, short-pedicellate, arising from the ascoma base. Ascospores overlapping, initially hyaline, ellipsoid, becoming dark brown, ovoid to broadly ellipsoidal, uniseptate, slightly constricted at the septum, smooth-walled. Asexual morph: Unknown (adapted from Doilom et al. 2018).

 Type species: Otthia spiraeae (Fuckel) Fuckel

Notes: Otthia was introduced as a subgenus of Otthiella Sacc. 1882. Nitschke (1870) raised Otthia to genus rank. Winter (1885) and Barr (1979) referred Otthia to Cucurbitariaceae. Phillips et al. (2005) reported that O. spiraeae (IMI 63581b; K 104853, Fuckel, Fungi Rhenani No. 975) was morphologically similar to members of Botryosphaeria and used the name Botryosphaeria sarmentorum for the specimen. Kirk et al. (2008) listed Otthia in Botryosphaeriaceae. Hu (2010) identified an isolate (HKUCC10896) as O. spiraeae and referred it to Botryosphaeriaceae based on phylogenetic analyses of LSU and SSU sequence data. Phillips et al. (2013) regarded the specimen studied by Phillips et al. (2005) as Dothiorella sarmentorum. Doilom et al. (2018) re-examined the holotype specimen of Cucurbitaria spiraeae (F88441) and reported similar morphological characters to those reported by Phillips et al. (2005) namely cylindrical, bitunicate asci with thin endotunica, 1-seriate, brown, uniseptate, oval ascospores with both ends rounded, and narrow, rarely septate pseudoparaphyses but listed Otthia in Dothideomycetes, genera incertae sedis. Lumbsch and Huhndorf (2010) and Wijayawardene et al. (2017, 2020) referred Otthia to Dothideomycetes genera incertae sedis. More collections with DNA sequence data are needed to confirm whether Otthia belongs to Botryosphaeriaceae.

 

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