Abstract
Interest in cave fungal diversity is flourishing because it may represent a reservoir of new species and metabolites. However, the mycobiota remains poorly studied in the underground environment, especially in neotropical regions. During surveys that aimed to investigate the fungal diversity in quartzite and limestone caves in the Southern Espinhaço Mountain in Brazil, six Chaetomiaceae isolates were obtained from different cave substrates. Five taxonomical novelties of Chaetomiaceae in Brazilian caves were discovered based on phylogenetic analyses using DNA sequences from the ITS, LSU, TUB, and RPB2 genes. Chaetomium meridionalense, Pseudohumicola alba, and Pseudohumicola lutea are new species found in Gruta da Extração and Gruta Velha Nova caves. Parahumicola is introduced as a new genus representing a novel phylogenetic lineage with unique morphological characteristics in the family Chaetomiaceae. This new monotypic genus is typified by P. guana, which was found in a bat guano sample in the Gruta Monte Cristo cave. Furthermore, this is the first report of Collariella bostrychodes in a neotropical cave. Overall, these findings emphasise that Brazilian caves constitute an untapped source of fungal resources.
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Data Availability
DNA sequences generated in this work are available at GenBank (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/). DNA alignments and phylogenetic trees are provided in the Electronic supplementary material.
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Acknowledgements
We thank colleagues of the Laboratório de Micologia e Etiologia de Doenças Fúngicas de Plantas/UFV for their collaboration during the conception of this work. We also thank Profs. Alexandre Reis Machado, André Luiz Firmino, and Jadson Diogo Pereira Bezerra for their valuable advice, which helped to conceive this manuscript.
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This work was supported by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES, Finance Code 001), Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais (FAPEMIG-VALE RDP-00017-18), and the Fundação Arthur Bernardes (FUNARDOC). T. O. Condé was supported by a doctoral scholarship from CNPq (process 140620/2019-2). The authors are also thankful to the Universidade Federal de Viçosa (UFV) and Universidade Federal dos Vales do Jequitinhonha e Mucuri (UFVJM) for providing additional resources for this research.
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Thiago Oliveira Condé performed sampling, laboratory work, data analyses, and writing. Ana Flávia Leão, André Wilson Campos Rosado, and Yan Lucas Gomes Dutra performed sampling, laboratory work, and data analyses. Olinto Liparini Pereira, Soraya de Carvalho Neves, and Lucio Mauro Soares Fraga performed sampling, data analyses, and facilitated funding acquisition. Maria Catarina Megumi Kasuya and Olinto Liparini Pereira supervised and designed the research project. All authors reviewed the manuscript.
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Condé, T.O., Leão, A.F., Dutra, Y.L.G. et al. Shedding light on the darkness: a new genus and four new species in the family Chaetomiaceae from Brazilian neotropical caves revealed by multi-gene phylogenetic analyses. Mycol Progress 22, 49 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11557-023-01899-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11557-023-01899-0