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South American morels in the Elata group: mitosporic states, distributions, and commentary

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Abstract

The occurrence and distribution of morels in Nothofagaceae forests of South America are addressed based on our field studies in Southern Chile and Argentina. Both ascomata and mitosporic colonies were collected. In addition, ascomata were procured from commercial harvesters. A four-gene (ITS, RPB1, RPB2, TEF1-α) and ITS phylogeny assigned these Morchella ascomatal and mitosporic collections to four Elata clade lineages, M. andinensis, M. aysenina, M. eximia, and M. tridentina, which were each well supported by ML and Bayesian analyses. The placement of our collections of the two lineages unique to South America, M. andinensis (previously cited as Mel-37) and M. aysenina, expands their known distribution in South America. Most of the field-collected mitosporic colonies in our study belong to the M. eximia “fire adapted lineage.” This is the first report of M. eximia, under this name, in Chile. Since the mitosporic colonies are frequent in the field, these collections help to expand the geographical range of currently described species.

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All sequences are available on GenBank.

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Acknowledgements

DHP acknowledges financial support from the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University. MES and RH acknowledge funding from NSF grant DEB-1946445 (to MES), and NSF grant DEB-1354802 (to MES and RH). Permission to collect fungi in the Chilean National System of Protected Wild Areas was provided by the Corporación Nacional Forestal (CONAF) under permit nos. 014/20214 and 013/2019. Collecting permits in Argentina were issued by the Administracion de Parques Nacionales of Argentina (Projecto 2016/720 to Eduardo Nouhra). Raimundo Garrido and Maria Popic provided access to private forested areas in Cordillera de Nahuelbuta. Luis Quijada assisted in the design of the trees and Eduardo Nouhra made suggestions on the manuscript. We thank those who have collected and contributed specimens, particularly Alija Mujic and Daniela Torres. We acknowledge the curators and herbarium managers of the following herbaria for loans and accessioning of materials used in this study: Alejandro Bringas at the Museo Botánico Córdoba (CORD), Benjamin Lemmond at the University of Florida Museums Fungal Herbarium (FLAS-F), Genevieve Lewis Gentry Tocci and Hannah Merchant (FH).

Funding

This work was supported by a research grant from the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University to Donald H. Pfister. Work by Matthew E. Smith and Roseanne Healy was supported by National Science Foundation grants DEB-1946445 (to MES), and DEB-1354802 (to MES and RH). Permission to collect fungi in the Chilean National System of Protected Wild Areas was provided by the Corporación Nacional Forestal (CONAF) under permit nos. 014/20214 and 013/2019.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Farlow Reference Library and Herbarium and Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, 22 Divinity Ave, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

    Donald H. Pfister, Katherine F. LoBuglio & James Mitchell

  2. Department of Plant Pathology, University of Florida, Fifield Hall, Gainesville, FL, 32611, USA

    Rosanne Healy & Matthew E. Smith

  3. Fungi Foundation, 716 Marcy Avenue, Brooklyn, NY, 11216, USA

    Giuliana Furci

Authors
  1. Donald H. Pfister
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  2. Rosanne Healy
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  3. Katherine F. LoBuglio
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  4. Giuliana Furci
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  5. James Mitchell
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  6. Matthew E. Smith
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Contributions

Donald H. Pfister conceived and organized the project and wrote the paper; Rosanne Healy did field collecting, photography, reviewed the manuscript, and performed sequencing and analysis; Kathrine LoBuglio prepared sequences, performed phylogenetic analyses, and reviewed the manuscript; Giuliana Furci provided field collections and assistance in the field logistics, and reviewed the manuscript; James Mitchell did literature searches and reviewed the manuscript; Matthew Smith provided funding for field work, collected samples, and reviewed the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Donald H. Pfister.

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Pfister, D.H., Healy, R., LoBuglio, K.F. et al. South American morels in the Elata group: mitosporic states, distributions, and commentary. Mycol Progress 21, 97 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11557-022-01846-5

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