Hiran A. Ariyawansa

National Taiwan University | NTU · Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology

A review of phylogenetic studies carried out together with morphological ones shows that a major problem with most early studies is that they concentrated on techniques and used material or strains of fungi that in most cases were not carefully reference, and in a worrying number of cases wrongly named. Most classical species, particularly of micro...

Neopestalotiopsis rosae is one of the most harmful pathogenic fungi for strawberry, causing leaf blight and crown rot, and has become the main strawberry disease worldwide. In this study, we present the first high-quality genome of N. rosae strain ML1664, combining Nanopore long-read and Illumina short-read sequencing technologies. A total of 18 co...

Brown blight, a destructive foliar disease of tea, has become a highly limiting factor for tea cultivation in Taiwan. To understand the population composition of the causal agents, Colletotrichum spp., the fungal diversity in the main tea growing regions all over Taiwan was surveyed from 2017 to 2019. A collection of 139 Colletotrichum isolates wer...

Erysiphe is the largest genus of powdery mildews (PMs), a group of obligate plant pathogenic fungi. Exploration of biodiversity generally relies on regional surveys and our aim is to investigate the PMs in Taiwan. Collections of the fungi on five plant species around agricultural environments were subjected to morphological and molecular characteri...

species are now emergent as potential plant pathogens. The latter can represent a major threat to staple crops such as rice, wheat, maize and potatoes either during cultural practices or during the post-harvest/storage stages (Alshannaq and Yu, 2017). If these pathogens are not detected and accurately identified in a timely matter and targeted dise...

Recent publications have argued that there are potentially serious consequences for researchers in recognising distinct genera in the terminal fusarioid clade of the family Nectriaceae. Thus, an alternate hypothesis, namely a very broad concept of the genus Fusarium was proposed. In doing so, however, a significant body of data that supports distin...

Biodiversity loss from disturbances caused by human activities means that species are disappearing at an ever increasing rate. The high number of species that have yet to be described have generated extreme crisis to the taxonomist. Therefore, more than in any other era, effective ways to discover and delimitate species are needed. This paper revie...

Camellia sinensis is one of the major crops grown in Taiwan and has been widely cultivated around the island. Tea leaves are prone to various fungal infections, and leaf spot is considered one of the major diseases in Taiwan tea fields. As part of a survey on fungal species causing leaf spots on tea leaves in Taiwan, 19 fungal strains morphological...

Welsh onion (Allium fistulosum L.) is one of the main and oldest vegetable crops grown in Taiwan. A severe epidemic of leaf blight in Welsh onion caused by a Stemphylium-like pathogen was found in Sanxing, Taiwan, from 2018 to 2020. However, correct species identification, biology and control of Stemphylium leaf blight (SLB) of Welsh onion is not w...

The identification and proper naming of microfungi, in particular plant, animal and human pathogens, remains challenging. Molecular identification is becoming the default approach for many fungal groups, and environmental metabarcoding is contributing an increasing amount of sequence data documenting fungal diversity on a global scale. This include...

Garden nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus), belonging to the family Tropaeolaceae, is a widely used ornamental plant. In April 2020, a powdery mildew was observed on garden nasturtium in central Taiwan. Symptoms included angular chlorotic lesions which later became brown and necrotic on both leaf surfaces. The fungus was identified as Leveillula taurica...

Numerous new taxa and classifications of Dothideomycetes have been published following the last monograph of families of Dothideomycetes in 2013. A recent publication by Honsanan et al. in 2020 expanded information of families in Dothideomycetidae and Pleosporomycetidae with modern classifications. In this paper, we provide a refined updated docume...

Diaporthe taiwanensis sp. nov. (Diaporthales, Sordariomycetes, Ascomycota) isolated on living leaves of Ixora chinensis from Taiwan, is characterized using both phenotypic and genetic characters. Phylogenetic reconstructions based on concatenated DNA sequence data of four nuclear genetic markers (ITS, tef1-α, β-tubulin and cal) show that the new ta...

For the past 30 years, the most predominant strawberry cultivar in Taiwan has been 'Taoyuan No. 1', which produces fruit with rich flavor and aroma but is highly susceptible to anthracnose (Chung et al. 2019). Because epidemics of anthracnose became more destructive, farmers switched to an anthracnose-tolerant cultivar 'Xiang-Shui' (~50% and ~80% o...

Strawberry is a small fruit crop with high economic value. Anthracnose caused by Colletotrichum spp. poses a serious threat to strawberry production, particularly in warm and humid climates, but knowledge of pathogen populations in tropical and subtropical regions is limited. To investigate the diversity of infectious agents causing strawberry anth...

Pleosporales species are important plant pathogens, saprobes, and endophytes on a wide range of economically important plant hosts. The classification of Pleosporales has undergone various modifications in recent years due to the addition of many families described from multiple habitats with a high level of morphological deviation. Numerous asexua...

Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze, commonly known as tea, is widely cultivated around the world in tropical and subtropical areas. Tea is mainly manufactured using young shoots of tea plants. Therefore, it is essential to control foliar diseases. Grey blight disease is caused by Pestalotiopsis-like taxa and is known as one of the most destructive te...

True fungi (Fungi) and fungus-like organisms (e.g. Mycetozoa, Oomycota) constitute the second largest group of organisms based on global richness estimates, with around 3 million predicted species. Compared to plants and animals, fungi have simple body plans with often morphologically and ecologically obscure structures. This poses challenges for a...

Meloidogyne enterolobii, an aggressive plant-parasitic nematode, has been causing great yield loss worldwide in recent years. With no resistant Chinese cabbage cultivar available currently, a biological control strategy is needed to offer an eco-friendly option for sustainable farming. In this study, the nematode suppression efficacy of two newly i...

Osmanthus fragrans naturally occurs in Taiwan, and is now widely cultivated as an ornamental plant. Signs of leaf spots caused by unknown species has been detected on O. fragrans saplings in Nangang District, Taipei City, Taiwan. This investigation aimed to illustrate the fungal species by engaging morphological features, pathogenicity tests, and D...

We are proud to publish a special issue of Fungal Diversity in honour of the contributions made by Erio Camporesi, who has promoted mycological research as a prodigious amateur mycologist and collector of fungi. The special issue includes Fungal Diversity notes 11, with many taxa named in Erio’s honour and a monograph of hyaline-spored Coelomycetes...

Nematophagous fungi, mostly belonging to the phylum Ascomycota, have raised great attention because of their potential use against plant-pathogenic nematodes. In this investigation, entomopathogenic fungi were collected in Taiwan and isolated and identified based on molecular phylogenetic analyses of six nuclear loci including LSU, ITS, TEF1, RPB1,...

The genus Ophiosphaerella contains 14 formerly illustrated species and is characterized by papillated ascomata bearing fissitunicate cylindrical asci frequently narrower near the base, with a short furcate pedicel and filamentous, pale brown, multi-septate ascospores without swollen cells or separating into part spores. We describe an Ophiosphaerel...

In this study, a new endophyte species within the genus Deniquelata (Didymosphaeriaceae) was isolated from the branches of Persian oak trees (Quercus brantii) in Zagros forests, Iran. The maximum parsimony and Bayesian analyses of 18S, 28S and ITS, rDNA sequence data revealed that the isolates were distinct from other species of the Deniquelata. Ba...

Inaccurate taxonomic placement of fossils can lead to the accumulation of errors in molecular clock studies and their generated evolutionary lineages. There are limited fossil data that can be used in divergence time estimations. Therefore, reliable morphological characterization and taxonomical identification of fossil fungi are extremely importan...

Specimens of a new pleosporalean taxon were obtained on the bark of Juniperus excels from the northern mountains of Oman; from the Jebel Akhdar (‘Green Hills’). Sequence analyses based on the regions of large subunit rRNA (LSU), small subunit rRNA (SSU), translation elongation factor 1-α (TEF) and internal transcribed spacers (ITS) were performed t...

As part of fungal exploration of Taiwan, we found several pestalotioid taxa from Taipei Botanical Gardens, Zhongzheng District. Based on single- and multi-locus phylogenies using internal transcribed spacer, β–tubulin and partial translation elongation factor 1–α gene regions, along with morphological features, these species fit into two novel taxa...

In the course of surveys on dothideomycetous fungal genera associated with various hosts in Taiwan, Neomassaria-like species were collected as saprobes on dead stems of Rhododendron sp. Maximum likelihood and Bayesian phylogenetic analyses based on concatenated LSU, rpb2, SSU and tef1 gene matrices indicate that Neomassaria-like isolates generated...

The order Pleosporales comprises a miscellaneous group of fungi and is considered to be the largest order of the class Dothideomycetes. The circumscription of Pleosporales has undergone numerous changes in recent years due to the addition of large numbers of families reported from various habitats and with a large amount of morphological variation....

Promputtha I 2018-Mycosphere Notes 225-274: types and other specimens of some genera of Ascomycota. Mycosphere 9(4), 647-754, Doi10.5943/mycosphere/9/4/3 Abstract This is the fifth in a series, Mycosphere notes, wherein 50 notes are provided on types of genera and other specimens with descriptions and illustrations. This includes one genus in Artho...

The genus Pseudopestalotiopsis comprises 14 formerly illustrated species and are well-known for their capability to produce unique medicinal compounds that may have pharmaceutical and agricultural applications. We elucidate a taxon of Pseudopestalotiopsis that is new to science collected from Diospyros sp. in Nantou County, Taiwan. We conducted pol...

Devadatha B, Sarma VV, Ariyawansa HA, Gareth Jones EB 2018-Deniquelata vittalii sp.nov., a novel Indian saprobic marine fungus on Suaeda monoica and two new records of marine fungi from Muthupet mangroves, East coast of India. Mycosphere 9(3), 565-582, Doi 10.5943/mycosphere/9/3/8 Abstract Deniquelata vittalii, a novel species of marine fungi in th...

Pestalotiopsis-like species are phytopathogenic, causing numerous diseases on different hosts, and are widely distributed in tropical and temperate ecosystems. These taxa were recently segregated into several genera and species having brown to dark brown or olivaceous median cells, with or without knobbed apical appendages, were classified under th...

Discomycetes are an artificial grouping of apothecia-producing fungi in the phylum Ascomycota. Molecular-based studies have revealed that the discomycetes can be found among ten classes of Ascomycota. The classification of discomycetes has been a major challenge due to the lack of a clear understanding of the important morphological characters, as...

Four microfungi collected from Italy and Russia are reported. Morphological examination revealed that all four species can be accommodated in the family Didymellaceae (Pleosporales) and more precisely in the genera Ascochyta, Boeremia, Didymella and Epicoccum. ITS, LSU, RPB2 and β-TUB sequence data were analysed to investigate their phylogenetic re...

The family Gloniaceae is represented by the genera Glonium (plant saprobes) and Cenococcum (ectomycorrhizae). This work adds to the knowledge of the family, by introducing a new taxon from dead scales of pine cones collected on the ground in Chiang Mai Province, Thailand. Analysis of a combined LSU, SSU, RPB2 and TEF1 sequence dataset matrix placed...

This is a first of a series of papers where we bring collaborating mycologists together to produce a set of notes of 50 taxa of fungi, including the new genera Phaeopoacea, Kalmusibambusa and Neoramichloridium, 33 new species, three new combinations, two reference specimens, one epitype, an asexual report and new host records or distribution record...

Tubeufia was named for a sexual morph taxon. However, several asexual morph species have been accommodated in this genus as well. In our study, four new species of Tubeufia, viz. T. filiformis, T. latispora, T. laxispora and T. mackenziei, are described and illustrated. The phylogenetic placement of the new species is confirmed by analysis of combi...

This is a continuity of a series of taxonomic and phylogenetic papers on the fungi where materials were collected from many countries, examined and described. In addition to extensive morphological descriptions and appropriate asexual and sexual connections, DNA sequence data are also analysed from concatenated datasets to infer phylogenetic relati...

In science, species are grouped and ranked in kingdoms, phyla, classes, orders, families and genera and several other intermediate taxa, in a taxonomic hierarchy. However, the ranking of phyla, classes, orders and families across kingdoms is not linked and there is unlikely to be any correlation between these ranks in animals, fungi or plants. In a...

COEIC 2017

The class Sordariomycetes, which is the second largest class in the phylum Ascomycota, comprises highly diversified fungal groups, with relatively high substitution and evolutionary rates. In this preliminary study, divergence estimates of taxa of Xylariomycetidae are calculated using Ophiocordyceps fossil evidence and secondary data. The combinati...

Fungal epiphytes are a polyphyletic group found on the surface of plants, particularly on leaves, with a worldwide distribution. They belong in the phylum Ascomycota, which contains the largest known number of fungal genera. There has been little research dating the origins of the common ancestors of fungal epiphytes. This study uses a molecular cl...

This paper briefly discusses the history of fungal taxonomy and contributes to the concepts and the importance of ranking genera, families and orders. We propose recommendations for introducing species into appropriate ranks such as genera, families and orders, as well as the rationale to maintain species in one genus or segregate one genus into se...

During an assessment of biodiversity of ascomycetous fungi in the South China Karst area in Guizhou Province, China, a novel species of Prosthemium was collected. We isolated the taxon and sequenced the ITS, LSU and TUB gene regions. The novel taxon is characterized by immersed, globose or depressed globose ascomata, flattened, papillate ostioles,...

The genus Fusariella, typified by F. atrovirens, is characterised by semi- to macronematous, mononematous conidiophores, with cylindrical, subulate or lageniform phialidic conidiogenous cells that produce catenate, septate, curved to straight, subhyaline to brown conidia. During a survey of hyaline-spored hyphomycetes from karst areas in Thailand,...

We are studying the fungi on seeds and fruits and identified two Pseudohalonectria species from cupules of beech nut (Fagus sylvatica), collected from slightly anoxic, stagnant water in the moat in Bishops Palace, Hampshire, UK. Phyloge-netic analysis of combined LSU, SSU and TEF1 sequence data provides evidence that they are new species in the gen...

A new ascomycetous species, Neokalmusia didymospora, inhabiting dead bamboo, is introduced based on morpho-molecular studies. Neokalmusia didymospora is characterized by orange to brown clypeus, immersed, subglobose ascomata, bitunicate, cylindrical asci and 1-septate, brown ascospores. Maximum-likelihood and Bayesian analyses of combined SSU, ITS...

Lophiostomataceae (Pleosporales, Dothideomycetes) is a ubiquitous family that includes saprobic species associated with a wide variety of substrates in various habitats. DNA based studies have shown numerous genera can be determined within the family Lophiostomataceae that do not always connect to species based on morphological characteristics. An...

Botryosphaeria is a species rich genus of plant saprobes, pathogens and endophytes, with a global distribution, on a wide variety of mainly woody hosts. Recent studies have discovered a wide-ranging diversity of species in Botryosphaeria. This work adds to this increasing body of knowledge on the genus, by introducing a new species of Botryosphaeri...

This is a continuity of a series of taxonomic papers where materials are examined, described and novel combinations are proposed where necessary to improve our traditional species concepts and provide updates on their classification. In addition to extensive morphological descriptions and appropriate asexual and sexual connections, DNA sequence dat...

Notes on 113 fungal taxa are compiled in this paper, including 11 new genera, 89 new species, one new subspecies, three new combinations and seven reference specimens. A wide geographic and taxonomic range of fungal taxa are detailed. In the Ascomycota the new genera Angustospora (Testudinaceae), Camporesia (Xylariaceae), Clematidis, Crassiparies (...

The generic types of four genera with unclear placement in Dothideomycetes were re-examined. These genera were hitherto poorly illustrated or described. The type specimens of Cocconia (C. palmae), Dianesea (D. palmae), Endococcus (E. rugulosus) and Lineostroma (L. banksiae), were re-examined in order to determine their familial and higher level pla...

During a north–south latitudinal survey of aquatic fungi on submerged wood and herbaceous material in streams in the Asian region, we collected several hyphomycetous taxa. This paper is part of a series where we provide illustrated accounts of these taxa and place them in a natural classification in the fungi. DNA sequence based phylogenies in rece...

Nodulosphaeria is a ubiquitous genus that comprises saprobic, endophytic and pathogenic species associated with a wide variety of substrates and has 64 species epithets listed in Index Fungorum. The classification of species in the genus has been a major challenge due to a lack of understanding of the importance of characters used to distinguish ta...

Members of the family Sporormiaceae are mostly saprobic on dung, but sometimes occur on other substrates, including plant debris, soil and wood. They have also been isolated as endophytes. The taxonomy and classification of the family is based on a small number of morphological and ecological characters. Several taxa are easily confused by their sh...

A sexual morph of a new species, Pezicula chiangraiensis, was collected on bark of decaying wood in Chiang Rai Province, Northern Thailand. Morphologically it is closely related to P. cinnamomea but differs by its ascospores having a gelatinous sheath; in culture it produces a sporodochium-like asexual morph. Phylogenetic analysis of combined ITS,...

The sexual morph recorded here for Lasiodiplodia pseudotheobromae, was collected from dead leaves of Plukenetia volubilis L. (Euphorbiaceae) in Yunnan Province, China. The sexual-asexual connection in Lasiodiplodia pseudotheobromae was confirmed by phylogenetic analyses of combined ITS and tef1-α sequence data. This is the first report of a sexual...

Massarineae is a suborder of Pleosporales, the latter being the largest order in Dothideomycetes. Massarineae comprises 14 families and six taxa of uncertain placement. In this study, we introduce an additional new family, Longipedicellataceae in Massarineae, which accommodates the genera Longipedicellata and Pseudoxylomyces. The family inhabits su...