TAXON — 1 Jun 2016: 9 pp. Taylor & al. • Choosing names for Aspergillus and teleomorphs NOMENCLATURE Edited by Jefferson Prado, James Lendemer & Erin Tripp Choosing one name for pleomorphic fungi: The example of Aspergillus versus Eurotium, Neosartorya and Emericella John W. Taylor,1 Markus Göker2 & John I. Pitt3 1 Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720-3102, U.S.A. 2 Leibniz Institute DSMZ – German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures, Braunschweig 38124, Germany 3 CSIRO Food and Nutrition, North Ryde, New South Wales 2113, Australia Author for correspondence: John W. Taylor,
[email protected] ORCID JWT, http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5794-7700; MG, http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5144-6200; JIP, http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6646-6829 DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.12705/653.10 Abstract With the termination of dual nomenclature, each fungus may have only one name. Now mycologists must choose between genus names formerly applied to taxa with either asexual or sexual reproductive modes, a choice that often influences the breadth of genotypic and phenotypic diversity in a genus, and even its monophyly. We use the asexual genus Aspergillus to examine the problems involved in such choices because (a) 11 sexual generic names are associated with it and (b) phenotypic variation and genetic divergence within sexual genera are low but between sexual genera are high. As a result, in the case of Aspergillus, applying the asexual name to the many sexual genera masks information now conveyed by the genus names and would lead to taxonomic inconsistency in the Eurotiales because this large Aspergillus would then embrace more genetic divergence than neighboring clades comprised of two or more genera.