Hypocreales » Cordycipitaceae » Cordyceps

Cordyceps fumosorosea

Cordyceps fumosorosea (Wize) Kepler, B. Shrestha & Spatafora, IMA Fungus 8(2): 347 (2017)

Index Fungorum number: IF 820980; Facesoffungi number: FoF 13959

Parasitic on insect cocoon. Sexual morph: Undetermined. Asexual morph: Synnemata paired, unbranched, clavate, white, stipitate. Conidiophores septate, apically branched, terminating in cluster of metulae. Matulae 4.5–7 × 2.4–4.6 (x̄ = 5.7 × 3.4, n = 20) μm, oblong, smooth-walled, producing a group of phialides on the apex. Phialides 4.5–8.5 × 2–3 (x̄ = 6.2 × 2.5, n = 35) μm, hyaline, with globose basal portion, tapering abruptly into narrow neck, phialidic. Conidia 2–3 (x̄ = 2.4, n = 40) μm, broadly fusiform to globose, hyaline, aseptate, aggregated in short chain.

Culture characteristics – Colonies on PDA reaching 5 cm after 20 days at 20 °C, pale yellow-green at centre, white at periphery, velvety, circular, mycelia loose, margin entire, reverse creamy yellow.

Material examined – China, Yunnan Province, Kunming City, Panlong District, forest near to Songhuaba reservoir, oninsect cocoon buried in soil, 27 November 2021, De-Ping Wei, SHB2704 (HKAS 102455), living culture KUNCC21-10508.

Notes – Isaria fumosorosea firstly was found on the larva of the beetle Cleoni punctiventris in Ukraine (Wize 1904). It was transferred to Spicaria by Vasilyevskii (1929). Both Isaria fumosorosea and Spicaria fumosorosea were merged under Paecilomyces fumosoroseus by Brown and Smith (1957) who provided the line drawings of conidial structures and conidia from culture materials. Samson (1974) observed several herbarium specimens and living cultures of P. fumosoroseus obtained from herbarium (K, IMI and CBS) and provided its description and drawings of microscopic characteristics. Kepler et al. (2017) rejected the genus name Isaria in favour of Cordyceps, and thus I. fumosorosea, S. fumosorosea and P. fumosoroseus were treated as synonyms of Cordyceps fumosorosea. Our isolates share similarities with those described by Samson (1974) in having synnematous conidiophores, flask-shaped phialides with a globose basal portion and cylindrical to fusiform conidia. The megablast search using ITS gene as query revealed that our isolates highly hit many strains of Cordyceps fumosorosea available in GenBank. The phylogenetic tree shows our new isolates grouped with C. fumosorosea with maximum support. Following comprehensive morphological observations and phylogenetic inference, we determined our isolate as C. fumosorosea.

 

Cordyceps fumosorosea (HKAS 102455). m Stromata growing from hosts. n Conidiophores. o Phialides. p Conidia. Scale bar: n = 20 μm, o, p = 5 μm (n, o stained with Congo red solution)

Reference:

Wei DP, Gentekaki E, Wanasinghe DN, Karunarathna SC, Tang SM, Hyde KD 2022 – Diversity, molecular dating and ancestral characters state reconstruction of entomopathogenic fungi in Hypocreales. Mycosphere 13: 281–351.

 

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