Abstract
Penicillium and Acaulium species are common in fresh herbivore dung and can produce many diverse secondary metabolites, and these fungi play important roles as decomposers of organic materials, food industry, or enzyme factories. Besides, the well-characterized diversity of coprophilous fungi offers accessible systems for dissecting the function of fungi and for exploring the potential to produce high amounts of cellulases in herbivore guts. During a survey of coprophilous fungi from herbivorous animals in China, more than 400 strains were isolated. Thirty-eight strains belonging to Penicillium and 4 belonging to Acaulium were obtained from 12 healthy animals including marmot and chinchilla and selected for detailed study. The strains were characterized by a multi-gene sequencing analysis of partial β-tubulin (TUB), the internal transcribed spacer rDNA (ITS), calmodulin (CAM), and RNA polymerase II second largest subunit (RPB2) genes, and a detailed phenotypic study. Penicillium strains were identified as belonging to six sections and 12 known species. In addition, four Acaulium isolates were identified as Acaulium album and A. stercorarius sp. nov. based on morphology and multi-gene sequence phylogeny. This study shows that the species diversity of Penicillium on herbivore dung has not been widely studied and that this substrate seems to be a good reservoir of interesting penicillium-like fungi.
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Data availability
All sequence data generated in this study (see Table 1) are available in GenBank (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/). Alignment files can be accessed via TreeBASE (http://www.treebase.org).
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Acknowledgements
We thank Dr. Qin Li for her constructive comments.
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This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China Grant (31700022), the CAMS Innovation Fund for Medical Sciences (CIFMS) grant (2017-12 M-2–005, 2016-I2M-2–006), the Central Public-interest Scientific Institution Basal Research Fund (2020PT310002), and the open fund of Key Laboratory of Microbial Resources Collection and Preservation, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (KLMRCP2021-09).
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The samples in this study were collected by B. Yang, P. Sun, and X. Li. Morphological investigations were observed and illustrated by L. Su. Description of the new and known species were described by L. Su. Molecular data and phylogenetic analyses were performed by L. Su. L. Su wrote the original draft, and review and editing were performed by H. Zhu, H. Gao, Z. Xiang, and C. Qin. All authors have read and approved the manuscript.
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Su, L., Zhu, H., Sun, P. et al. Species diversity in Penicillium and Acaulium from herbivore dung in China, and description of Acaulium stercorarius sp. nov. Mycol Progress 20, 1539–1551 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11557-021-01747-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11557-021-01747-z