Supplement to Mycologia Vol. 52(6) December 2001 Newsletter of the Mycological Society of America -- In This Issue -- Interactive Key, Descriptions & Illustrations Hypomycetes On-line ............................. 1-2 for Hypomyces Now On-line ITS Reality ................................................ 2-3 http://nt.ars-grin.gov/taxadescriptions/hypomyces/ UFO Rings and Fungi ............................. 3-6 MSA Official Business by David F. Farr President’s Corner ................................ 6-7 Questions or comments should be sent to David Farr via USDA ARS, Syst. Bot. Council Email Express ............................. 7 & Mycol. Lab., Room 304, Bldg. 011A, Beltsville, MD 20705 or email: <[email protected]>. Important Announcements ...... 8, 21, 22 Awards Announcements/Nominations .... 9-12 R. KADRI POLDMAA, VISITING SCIENTIST from University of Tartu, Annual Council Meeting Minutes .... 13-16 Estonia, with Dr. David Farr and Ms. Erin McCray, USDA- Annual Business Meeting Minutes .. 17-18 DARS Systematic Botany and Mycology Laboratory, have Official Roster 2001-02 .................... 18-21 produced an online interactive key with descriptions and illustrations Foray Lists Requested........................... 22 for the genus Hypomyces (Hypocreales, Hypocreaceae). Species of From the Editor ..................................... 23 Hypomyces and their asexual states in Cladobotryum, Mycogone and Sepedonium are a group of microscopic fungi generally found on the 2001 MSA Award Winners .............. 23-28 fruiting bodies of other fungi. They are characterized by the develop- Forms ment of light or brightly colored perithecia formed in a concolorous Change of Address ............................. 32 subiculum. Endowment & Contributions ............. 41 Detailed descriptions and illustrations are presented for the 30 Gift Membership ............................... 43 species of Hypomyces that represent a majority of the species found Society Membership .......................... 44 in temperate regions. The interactive key uses 37 diagnostic charac- Mycological News ............................... 29-32 ters selected from a database developed in DELTA that includes Mycologist’s Bookshelf ...................... 33-37 about 100 characters. The 37 characters represent teleomorph, Reviews — Kiffer and Morelet’s The Deuteromycetes, Mitosporic Fungi. anamorph and cultural characters that are easily observed in most of Classification and Generic Keys. the taxa. In this way the user who finds only the anamorph or the Mycological Classifieds ....................... 37-39 teleomorph in nature can go directly to the most useful group of Mycology On-Line ................................... 39 characters. Thus, the identification process is independent of the Calendar of Events .................................... 40 order of characters used. Additionally ease of identification is Sustaining Members ............................ 41-43 ~ Important Dates ~ December 14: Deadline: Inoculum 53(1) January 31: Mentor Student Travel Forms February 15: Undergraduate Research Forms March 1: Graduate Fellowships and Research Awards Nominations March 15: MSA Distinctions Nominations June 22-26: MSA 2002, Corvallis, OR Editor: Donald G. Ruch Department of Biology Ball State University Muncie, IN 47306-0440 USA 765.285.8829 FAX 765.285.8804 [email protected] MSA Homepage: http://msafungi.org The anamorph of Hypomyces chrysospermus. Photo from Dave Farr. illustrations, there is an introduction to Hypomyces, an illustrated glossary of the characters, literature references, distribution records and information on nomenclature. All the information for the key and descriptions is stored in a a MSAccess database, thus other groups of fungi could be displayed without any change in the web program. It is possible to remotely update much of the information on the site. Spore of the anamorph of Hypomyces Photographs can be added or replaced, chrysospermus. Photo from Dave Farr. descriptions can be modified etc without The anamorph of Hypomyces having to modify the web pages. enhanced by the inclusion of over 500 chrysospermus. Photo from Dave Farr. Additional details can be found in the photographs. Side-by-side compari- ‘About’ section on the web. We sons of multiple taxa can be made using Stewart, Department of Plant Pathology, welcome your comments! If you would a single character or all of the charac- Pennsylvania State University and Gary like to use this program with your data, ters. Comparisons can use illustrations Samuels, USDA-ARS, Systematic only, descriptions only, or both. There please contact us. Botany and Mycology Laboratory. The is also an option to list the characters The DELTA dataset was developed by web interface was developed by David separating two or more taxa. In Kadri Poldmaa as part of a NSF PEET Farr and Erin McCray at the Systematic addition to the key, descriptions and project DEB 9712308 awarded to Elwin Botany and Mycology Laboratory. ITS Reality by Thomas D. Bruns Questions or comments should be sent to Tom Bruns via 111 Koshland Hall, Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3102 or email: <[email protected]>. T THE RECENT MSA meetings in Chitinase subunits, and others. The Salt using alignments that border on fiction. Salt Lake city there seemed to be Lake City Meeting was a goodshow case Choosing the latter usually effects the Aconsiderable confusion about for some of these, and comparisons often deeper branches in the tree because the the value of internal transcribed spacer showed that they were more informative most similar sequences remain well region (ITS) sequence data for phyloge- than ITS at differentiating species and at aligned. netic analyses. The purpose of this producing well supported internal Lack of variation among very closely short note is to communicate my views branches. related species is the second major on the subject. In doing so I hope to Now lets take a critical look at ITS and problem. What? Lack of variation in clarify some of serious limitations of ITS, examine its limitations for phylogenetic ITS? Yes, this is a widely unappreciated but also to argue for its continuing value analysis. Alignment is the first and truth about ITS; very closely related in fungal systematics and ecology. foremost problem. Anyone who has species often have similar or identical Let’s start with a little history. The dealt with ITS sequences knows this. ITS sequences. Examples that come to popularity of ITS has much to do with The alignment problems with the spacers mind include: Heterobasidion annosum precedence and convenience. The first are based on the fact that insertions and S and P groups, various species in the primers for it were published in the White deletions are common. This effectively Armillaria mellea complex, and most et al. 1990, and for several years thereaf- narrows the range of ITS utility because Fusarium species groups. Many other ter it was the only highly variable more distantly related taxa can not be cases exist, but I picked these because universal region that could be amplified unambiguously aligned. In fact, it is rare the species borders are defined in part by without further primer design. As a that ITS sequences from different genera mating behavior and are supported by result it became the most common target can be well aligned. That means that the other molecular data. How should we for subgeneric phylogenetic analysis, phylogenetic range of ITS is narrow and deal with other cases where we have little and lack of ITS variation was often that outgroups are almost never close or no ITS variation and no other data? interpreted as evidence for enough to be alignable. Thus rooting of Cautiously! Lack of ITS variation does conspecificity. Over the past several ITS trees is rarely practical except at the not provide evidence of conspecificity. years many protein gene targets have midpoint. For data sets that extend It only means that taxa are closely become available such as EF1-alpha, outside the alignable range, one either related. A fairly safe statement is that Beta tubulin, RNA polymerases, ends up throwing out most of the data or they are in the same species group or 2 complex. environmental samples. In situations that will be more valuable than the trees Should we abandon ITS for other where all we have is the vegetative stage produced from them. For these reasons targets? No! An ITS phylogeny will of some fungus embedded in plant ITS is here to stay. remain valuable for several reasons. material or soil, the multicopy nature of So maybe ITS is good enough after all? First, it usually does an excellent job of ITS and its highly conserved primer sites Absolutely not, at least if your primary sorting out species groups, and it make it almost ideal. As the public goal is to produce a resolved subgeneric remains one of the easiest regions to databases swell with ITS sequences, the phylogeny and convince others of its amply and sequence across a broad value of the locus for identification merits. You will certainly need to range of fungi and sample types. In fact, increases. Anyone who has not yet run sequence additional loci, and there are no other highly variable region is as easy a BLAST search on an ITS spacer reason now several excellent options. We have to amply from minute or complex should try it; it’s the fastest way to find clearly entered the era of the multi-gene samples; this property can be credited to the close relatives of an unknown, but it phylogenies. This should be embraced its multicopy nature and highly con- is only as good as the taxon sample in and applauded. But let’s not abandon served priming sites. Second, (and here I the data base. For this reason it is very ITS in the process, and let’s not expect have to concede to some vested self- important for the fungal ITS sequence ITS or any other single locus to be the interest) it is quickly becoming the best data continue to grow. I would predict magic answer to the tough questions of target for identification of unknown that in the long run it is the raw ITS data what is a species or how are they related.