Project Details
Projekt
Molecular taxonomy of aquatic hyphomycetes by safeguarding of historical collections
Applicant
Privatdozentin Dr. Christiane Baschien
Subject Area
Evolution and Systematics of Plants and Fungi
Term
since 2020
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 447009466
Aquatic hyphomycetes are important key players in the decomposition and conversion of leaf litter in lotic systems. Aquatic hyphomycetes comprise over 300 species. The characteristic staurosporous conidial traits of most aquatic hyphomycetes are produced as morphological adaptations to survival and dispersal in aquatic habitats. The phylogenetic relationships of aquatic hyphomycetes and the extent of convergence of conidial characters that delineate the asexual genera are rarely known. These gaps in our understanding persist due to the scarcity of sequences of ex-type or authentic cultures. Aquatic hyphomycetes are underrepresented in public culture collections. More often strains of aquatic hyphomycetes are not accessible – either hidden in restricted collections, or types only available as dried cultures and slides. The two largest collections of an ecologically important group of fungi are owned by two retired researchers and have to be safeguarded for future research. Therefore the strains will be sampled from their collections and checked for viability and identity. The goal of this project is the novel and efficient use of the culture collections of two famous taxonomists. Therefore all preserved cultures will be multilocus sequenced and key taxa will be genome sequenced. This will lead to clarified identifications, improved classifications and names correctly assigned with respect to the rules of nomenclature, newly defined genus and species boundaries. Species with lost types or types in poor condition will be epitypified. Furthermore, the evolutionary history and the genomic taxonomy of a phylogenetically heterogeneous fungal group will be elucidated with phylogenomics. The preserved collections and associated data, including both sequences and phenotypic traits, are crucial to improve biodiversity research. All sequence data generated in this project and taxonomic novelties will be added to public databases (i.e. GenBank, MycoBank).
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
