Pleosporales » Pleosporaceae

Curvularia

Curvularia Boedijn, Bull. Jard. bot. Buitenz, 3 Sér. 13(1): 123 (1933).

Index Fungorum number: IF 7847; Facesoffungi number: FoF 00510, 165 morphological species (Species Fungorum, 2022), 79 species with molecular data.

Pathogenic on host. Mycelium brown, grey or black, cottony or velvety. Sexual morph: Ascomata superficial, globose to ellipsoidal, dark brown to black, free or frequently developing from columnar stromata or flat stromata, with a well-defined ostiolar beak. Peridium coriaceous, carbonaceous, pseudoparenchymatous. Hamathecium comprising pseudoparaphyses, filiform, septate and sometimes branched. Asci 1–8-spored, bitunicate, fissitunicate, cylindrical to cylindrical clavate, pedicel short. Ascospores fasciculate, usually parallel, loosely coiled or highly coiled at the extremities of the ascus, filamentous, filiform to flageliform and somewhat tapered at the extremities, 3–20 septate, hyaline or somewhat pigmented at maturity. Asexual morph: Conidiophores branched or unbranched, straight to flexuous, septate, smooth to verruculose, often geniculate sometimes nodulose. Conidiogenous cells polytretic, integrated, sometime when mature becoming either intercalary, sympodial, cylindrical, cicatrized or sometimes swollen. Conidiogenous nodes smooth to verrucose. Conidia straight oblong, ellipsoidal, clavate, fusiform, subcylindrical or lunate, rounded at the ends or sometimes tapering slightly towards the base, pale brown, medium reddish brown to dark brown, 3–10 distoseptate (usually 3–5), conidial wall smooth to verrucose. Hilum protuberant in some species. Stromata formed in some species (Adapted from Manamgoda et al., 2012).

 

Type species: Curvularia lunata (Wakker) Boedijn

 

Notes: Curvularia is characterised by superficial, globose to ellipsoidal, dark brown to black ascomata, cylindrical to cylindrical-clavate asci and filiform to flageliform ascospores. The asexual morph is characterised by smooth to verruculose conidiophores, polytretic, integrated conidiogenous cells, and straight oblong, ellipsoidal, clavate, fusiform, subcylindrical or lunate conidia. Some species have a protuberant hilum. The sexual morph of Curvularia was previously reported as Pseudocochliobolus (Seifert et al. 2011). Manamgoda et al. (2012) provided an updated phylogenetic tree of Curvularia based on ITS, GAPDH, LSU and TEF1. Manamgoda et al. (2012) transferred nine species named as Bipolaris to Curvularia as new combinations based on the multigene analysis. Curvularia lunata was previously described as Acrothecium lunatum from decaying leaves of sugarcane in Java (Wakker 1898). Boedijin (1933) transferred A. lunatum to the new genus Curvularia and designated it as the type species. The material of Wakker (1898) and Boedijin (1933) is lost. Manamgoda et al. (2012) chose CBS 157.34 as the neotype, which is genetically very similar to the Boedijn strain. Curvularia resembles Bipolaris in having short, slightly curved conidia with intermediate conidial characters (Sivanesan 1992). Curvularia is morphologically and phylogenetically a distinct genus in Pleosporaceae. Molecular markers available for Curvularia are ITS, LSU, Actin, GAPDH, TEF-1, Histone and Calmodulin.

 

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