RESULTS

Phylogenetic analysis

Approximately 1 700 bases, spanning the ITS and LSU regions, were obtained for isolates listed in Table 1. These two regions were analysed separately; ITS, together with EF-1a and ACT, to determine species level relationships and LSU for the generic placement. Approximately 350-600 and 230 bases were determined for EF-1a and ACT, respectively, and these were concatenated with the corresponding ITS sequences for a combined analysis of the Cladosporium species with ex-type or representative strains.

The manually adjusted LSU alignment contained 98 taxa (including the outgroup sequence) and, of the 837 characters used in the phylogenetic analysis, 408 were parsimony-informative, 50 were variable and parsimony-uninformative and 379 were constant. Neighbour-joining analyses using the three substitution models on the sequence data yielded trees with similar topology and bootstrap values; 528 equally most parsimonious trees were obtained from the heuristic search, the first of which is shown in Fig. 2 (TL = 2 302, CI = 0.375, RI = 0.827, RC = 0.310). The phylogenetic tree derived from this region (Fig. 2) shows that Cladosporium s.str. is restricted whereas Cladosporium-like genera are distributed across many different orders, including but not restricted to Corticiales, Pleosporales, Helotiales, Chaetothyriales etc. These genera are discussed in more detail elsewhere in this manuscript.

The manually adjusted combined ITS, EF-1a and ACT alignment contained 70 taxa (including the outgroup sequence) and, of the 1 112 characters used in the phylogenetic analysis, 385 were parsimony-informative, 212 were variable and parsimonyuninformative and 515 were constant. Neighbour-joining analyses using the three substitution models on the sequence data yielded trees with similar topology and bootstrap values. Twelve equally most parsimonious trees were obtained from the heuristic search, the first of which is shown in Fig. 5 (TL = 3 415, CI = 0.372, RI = 0.636, RC = 0.237). The phylogenetic tree of these combined regions (Fig. 5) shows that the ex-type and representative strains known from sequence can be placed in one of three species complexes, the exceptions being C. salinae and C. aphidis, and with C. langeronii and C. psychrotolerans not occurring on the same branch as the rest of the species in the C. sphaerospermumcomplex but as a more basal sister clade.

Alphabetical descriptive list of true Cladosporium species

The present work provides a comprehensive treatment of all biotrophic, foliicolous, fungicolous and saprobic Cladosporium species known to date. Cladosporium species formerly referred to the genus Heterosporium described in detail by David (1997) are also included. Species of uncertain taxonomic position and excluded species are separately listed. Names are arranged in alphabetical order. All species are comprehensively described and illustrated. Drawings (1: 100) are, if not otherwise stated, based on type material or other authentic collections. The scale bars represent 10 [micro]m. The treatments of the particular species contain the scientific names with bibliographic references, synonyms, type collections, literature references, published illustrations, exsiccatae, comprehensive descriptions, host range and geographic distribution, additional collections examined and notes. Author abbreviations conform to those of Brummit & Powell (1992), while journal...