Tothia
Tothia Bat., in Toth, Annls hist.-nat. Mus. natn. hung. 52: 105 (1960).
Index Fungorum number: IF 5506; Facesoffungi number: FoF 00401, 2 morphological species (Species Fungorum 2022), 2 species with molecular data.
Saprobic on stems of Teucrium chamaedrys. Superficial mycelium absent. Sexual morph: Ascomata, solitary or gregarious, superficial, appearing as small black dots on the host surface, thyriothecial, dome-shaped or flat-conical, dark brown, membranaceous, opening by a short papillate ostiole. Peridium dark brown, comprising a single upper layer of cells of textura angularis; ascoma base, comprising hyaline ellipsoidal cells. Hamathecium of pseudoparaphyses longer than asci. Asci 8-spored, bitunicate, fissitunicate, obclavate, with a knob-like short pedicel, lacking an ocular chamber. Ascospores 2–3 seriate, fusiform or oblong-ellipsoid, light brown, one septate, slightly constricted at the septum, upper cell slightly wider than the lower, with four guttules, smooth-walled. Asexual morph: Unknown (adapted from Wu et al. 2011).
Type species: Tothia fuscella (Sacc.) Bat.
Notes: Tothia is characterised by solitary or gregarious, superficial ascomata, fissitunicate, obclavate asci with a knob-like short pedicel, and light brown, one-septate ascospores (Wu et al. 2011c). Wu et al. (2011c) re-described the type species of T. fuscella and provided an epitype and a living ex-type culture. Tothia differs from other members of Microthyriaceae in ascomatal characters. Tothia resembles Microthyrium in having one-septate, guttulate, slightly asymmetrical ascospores but differs in having light brown ascospores. In the phylogenetic analyses of Wu et al. (2011c) based on LSU and ITS sequence data, T. fuscella was closely related to members of Venturiaceae. The authors suggested that thyriothecial ascomata are rare in species of Venturiaceae and it might be that the ascoma type has evolved independently numerous times within Dothideomycetes. Tothia resembles species of Venturiaceae in having yellowish, greenish brown to brown, one-septate ascospores and obclavate asci (Barr 1968, 1989b). Hongsanan et al. (2020b) excluded Tothia from Venturiaceae based on morphology namely the thyriothecial ascomata and multigene phylogeny of LSU, SSU and RPB2 sequence data transferred it to Microthyriales genera incertae sedis. Tothia is now included in Cylindrosympodiaceae (Shen et al. 2020). ITS and LSU sequence data are available for T. spartii and T. fuscella in GenBank.
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