Outline of fungi - Note 1217 Erysiphacites

ZAPATA, CINTIA; NUÑEZ OTAÑO N.B.

Mycosphere

Innovative Institute for Plant Health , Zhongkai University of Agriculture and Engineering

Lugar: Guangzhou; Año: 2024

Erysiphacites V.D. Kapgate ex R.K. Saxena, V.D. Kapgate & P.K. KirkKapgate (2016) introduced Erysiphacites (fossil Ascomycota) within Erysiphaceae(Leotiomycetes, Ascomycota) to describe a new species based on morphological analyses of afossil specimen found in India. This monotypic genus was typified by E. nambudirii V.D.Kapgate ex R.K. Saxena, V.D. Kapgate & P.K. Kirk. However, the genus and species nameswere invalidly published by Kapgate (2016). Later, records and identifiers were created tovalidate the fossil specimen by Saxena et al. (2023). Morphologically, mainly due to its slenderunbranched, unicellular conidiophores consisting of a basal cell and short terminal generativecell, this fossil genus is comparable with Erysiphe. Differences with Phyllactinia andSphaeroteca arise from these latter genera having globular conidiophores. Erysiphacites wasfound on pieces of petrified cherts from the Late Cretaceous (Nambudiri & Chitaley 1991,Kapgate 2016), and using modern ecological requirements as a paleoecological andclimatological analog could be possible for the fossil species to be a non-aquatic-obligatoryparasite-on a wide range of angiosperms and several herbaceous plants, probably under mild weather conditions (Nguyen et al. 2016, Põlme et al. 2020, Hsiao et al. 2022).