Skip to main content Skip to main navigation menu Skip to site footer
Responsive image
Issue: Vol. 700 No. 3: 9 May 2025
Type: Article
Published: 2025-05-09
DOI: 10.11646/phytotaxa.700.3.3
Page range: 269-278
Abstract views: 398
PDF downloaded: 9

A new species of Waitea described and illustrated based on morphology and phylogeny from Western Ghats, India

National Fungal Culture Collection of India, Biodiversity and Palaeobiology Group, MACS’ Agharkar Research Institute, G.G. Agarkar Road, Pune 411004, India
National Fungal Culture Collection of India, Biodiversity and Palaeobiology Group, MACS’ Agharkar Research Institute, G.G. Agarkar Road, Pune 411004, India
Dead wood ITS nLSU New taxon Waitea Fungi

Abstract

A novel species, Waitea lakhanpalii, is established to accommodate an interesting basidiomycetous fungus with corticoid, thin, and effused fruiting bodies found growing on dead wood in the Kolhapur region of Maharashtra, India. The identification of this strain was determined based on the morphological characters and phylogenetic analysis of internal transcribed spacer region (ITS) and 28S large subunit (nLSU) sequence data. The detailed taxonomic descriptions, cultural and microscopic images, and phylogenetic tree are presented for the new taxon. The sequencing data of this isolate exhibited substantial distinctness from the previously discovered species of Waitea and thus created a unique and distinct clade.

References

  1. Aamir, S., Sutar, S., Singh, S.K. & Baghela, A. (2015) A rapid and efficient method of fungal genomic DNA extraction, suitable for PCR-based molecular methods. Plant Pathology and Quarantine 5: 74–81.
  2. Agnihotri, V.P. & Vaartaja, O. (1969) Stimulation of Waitea circinata by root exudates of Pinus cembroides. Canadian Journal of Microbiology 15: 873–874.
  3. Agnihotri, V.P. (1971) Effects of certain fungi-toxicants on the viability and pathogenicity of sclerotia of Waitea circinata. Journal of Phytopathology 70: 71–80.
  4. Amaradasa, B.S., Horvath, B.J., Lakshman, D.K. & Warnke, S.E. (2013) DNA fingerprinting and anastomosis grouping reveal similar genetic diversity in Rhizoctonia species infecting turfgrasses in the transition zone of USA. Mycologia 105 (5): 1190–1201. https://doi.org/10.3852/12-368
  5. de Carvalho, J.C.B., Chaibub, A.A., Sousa, K.C.I., de Brito, D.C., de Filippi, M.C.C., Kato, L. & de Araújo, L.G. (2021) Efficiency of a new Waitea circinata extract against rice pathogens. Pesquisa agropecuaria tropical 51: e66916. https://doi.org/10.1590/1983-40632021v5166916
  6. de Carvalho, J.C.B., Chaibub, A.A., Sousa, K.C.I., de Brito, D.C., de Sousa Silva, C., Möller, P.A., Pereira, M.C., de Faria, F.P., de Filippi, M.C.C. & de Araújo, L.G. (2022) Characterization of the antagonism of the mycorrhizal fungus Waitea circinata against Magnaporthe oryzae, Cochliobolus miyabeanus, Monographella albescens and Sarocladium oryzae rice pathogens. Colloquium Agrariae 18 (2): 1–14.
  7. Carvalho, J.C.B., Sousa, K.C.I., Brito, D.C., Chaibub, A.A., Luzini, A.P., Côrtes, M.V.C.B., Filippi, M.C.C., Kato, L., Vaz, B.G., Costa, H.B., Romão, W. & Araújo, L.G. (2015) Biocontrol potential of Waitea circinata, an orchid mycorrhizal fungus, against the rice blast fungus. Tropical Plant Pathology 40: 151–159. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40858-015-0042-8
  8. Chang, T. & Lee, Y.S. (2016) Occurrence of brown blight caused by Waitea circinata var. zeae on cool season turfgrass in Korea. Mycobiology 44 (4): 330–334. https://doi.org/10.5941/MYCO.2016.44.4.330
  9. Chen, C.M., Douhan, G.W. & Wong, F.P. (2007) First Report of Waitea circinata var. circinata causing brown ring patch on Poa trivialis in California. Disease Notes 91 (12): 1687–1687. https://doi.org/10.1094/PDIS-91-12-1687A
  10. Chen, C.M., Douhan, G.W. & Wong, F.P. (2011) First report of basal leaf blight of kikuyugrass caused by Waitea circinata var. prodigus in Southern California. Plant disease 95 (6): 767. https://doi.org/10.1094/PDIS-01-11-0021
  11. de la Cerda, K.A., Douhan, G.W. & Wong, F.P. (2007) Discovery and characterization of Waitea circinata var. circinata affecting annual bluegrass from the Western United States. Plant disease 91 (7): 791–797. https://doi.org/10.1094/PDIS-91-7-0791
  12. De Priest, P.T., Sikaroodi, M., Lawrey, J.D. & Diederich, P. (2005) Marchandiomyces lignicola sp. nov. shows recent and repeated transition between a lignicolous and a lichenicolous habit. Mycological Research 109: 57–70.
  13. Flor, N., Harmon, P., Datnoff, L., Raid, R. & Nagata, R. (2008) First report of brown ring patch caused by Waitea circinata var. circinata on Poa trivialis in Florida. Plant disease 92 (11): 1586. https://doi.org/10.1094/PDIS-92-11-1586A
  14. Ghobad-Nejhad, M., Nilsson, R.H. & Hallenberg, N. (2010) Phylogeny and taxonomy of the genus Vuilleminia (Basidiomycota) based on molecular and morphological evidence with new insights into Corticiales. Taxon 59: 1519–1534.
  15. Grachet, N.G. & Walker, N.R. (2016) First report of brown ring patch caused by Waitea circinata on Perennial Ryegrass (Lolium perenne) in Oklahoma. Disease Notes 100 (4): 855–855. https://doi.org/10.1094/PDIS-08-15-0906-PDN
  16. Gruhn, G. & Ghobad‐Nejhad, M. (2020) A new species and a new combination in Waitea (Corticiales, Basidiomycota) and the phylogenetic affinity of Disporotrichum. Mycologia Iranica 7 (2): 171–179. https://doi.org/10.22043/mi.2021.124280
  17. Gutierrez, S.A., Cundom, M.A., Gasoni, L. & Barrera, V. (2007) First record of Rhizoctonia zeae on corn in Argentina. Australasian Plant Disease Notes 2: 137–138.
  18. Kalyaanamoorthy, S., Minh, B.Q., Wong, T.K.F., von Haeseler, A. & Jermiin, L.S. (2017) ModelFinder: Fast model selection for accurate phylogenetic estimates. Nature Methods 14: 587.
  19. Kammerer, S.J., Burpee, L.L. & Harmon, P.F. (2011) Identification of a New Waitea circinata variety causing basal leaf blight of Seashore Paspalum. Plant disease 95 (5): 515–522. https://doi.org/10.1094/PDIS-03-10-0204
  20. Katoh, K. & Standley, D.M. (2013) MAFFT Multiple sequence alignment software version 7: Improvements in performance and usability. Molecular Biology and Evolution 30: 772–780.
  21. Kerns, J.P., Koch, P.L., Horgan, B.P., Chen, C.M. & Wong, F.P. (2010) First report of brown ring patch caused by Waitea circinata var. circinata on Poa annua in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Plant disease 94 (9): 1165. https://doi.org/10.1094/PDIS-94-9-1165A
  22. Kornerup, A. & Wanscher, J.H. (1978) Metheun’s Handbook of colours, IIIrd Ed. Metheun and Co. Ltd., London, 252 pp.
  23. Lanoiselet, V.M., Ash, G.J., Cother, E.J., Priest, M.J. & Watson, A. (2001) First report of Waitea circinata causing sheath spot and Rhizoctonia oryzae sativae causing aggregate sheath spot on rice in south-eastern Australia. Australasian Plant Pathology 30: 369–370. https://doi.org/10.1071/AP01053
  24. Larsson, A. (2014) AliView: A fast and lightweight alignment viewer and editor for large data sets. Bioinformatics 30: 3276–3278.
  25. Li, Z.Y., Wang, N., Dong, Z.P., Dong, L., Bai, H., Quan, J.Z. & Liu, L. (2014) First report of sheath blight caused by Waitea circinata affecting foxtail millet (Setaria italica) in China. Plant disease 98 (10): 1442. https://doi.org/10.1094/PDIS-06-14-0603-PDN
  26. McDonald, S.J., Averell, R.M., Glass, M.E., Young, H.M., Mysliwiec, T.H., Sanford, D.L. & Fidanza, M.A. (2010) First report of brown ring patch on Poa annua caused by Waitea circinata var. circinata in West Virginia. Plant disease 94 (11): 1379. https://doi.org/10.1094/PDIS-04-10-0274
  27. Melignani, E., Guidobono, J.S., Rojo, R.A., Levin, L.N. & Barrera, V.A. (2024) Studies on the biotechnological potential of Argentinean isolates of Waitea arvalis (Corticiales, Basidiomycota) for the biological control of phytopathogenic fungi. Mycological Progress 23: 16. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11557-024-01944-6
  28. Nguyen, L.T., Schmidt, H.A., von Haeseler, A. & Minh, B.Q. (2015) IQ-TREE: A fast and effective stochastic algorithm for estimating maximum-likelihood phylogenies. Molecular Biology and Evolution 32: 268–274.
  29. Ni, X.X., Li, B.T., Cai, M. & Liu, X.L. (2012) First report of brown ring patch caused by Waitea circinata var. circinata on Agrostis stolonifera and Poa pratensis in China. Plant disease 96 (12): 1821. https://doi.org/10.1094/PDIS-04-12-0406-PDN
  30. Roberts, P. (1999) Rhizoctonia-forming fungi. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. [ISBN 1-900347-69-5]
  31. Singh, V., Lakshman, D.K., Roberts, D.P., Ismaiel, A., Hooda, K.S. & Gogoi, R. (2022) Morphopathological and molecular morphometric characterization of Waitea circinata var. prodigus causing a novel sheath spot disease of maize in India. Plant disease 106 (2): 526–534. https://doi.org/10.1094/PDIS-05-21-0951-RE
  32. Stalpers, J.A. & Andersen, T.F. (1996) A synopsis of the taxonomy of teleomorphs connected with Rhizoctonia s. l. In: Sneh, B., Jabaji-Hare, S., Neate, S. & Dijst, G. (Eds.) Rhizoctonia species, taxonomy, molecular biology, ecology, pathology and disease control. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp. 49–63.
  33. Tamura, K., Stecher, G. & Kumar, S. (2021) MEGA11: Molecular Evolutionary Genetics Analysis Version 11. Molecular Biology and Evolution 38 (7): 3022–3027. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msab120
  34. Toda, T., Hayakawa, T., Mghalu, J.M., Yaguchi, S. & Hyakumachi, M. (2007) A new Rhizoctonia sp. closely related to Waitea circinata causes a new disease of creeping bentgrass. Journal of General Plant Pathology 73: 379–387.
  35. Toda, T., Mushika, T., Hayakawa, T., Tanaka, A., Tani, T. & Hyakumachi, M. (2005) Brown Ring Patch: A new disease on bentgrass caused by Waitea circinata var. circinata. Plant disease 89 (6): 536–542. https://doi.org/10.1094/PD-89-0536
  36. Vilgalys, R. & Cubeta, M.A. (1994) Molecular systematics and population biology of Rhizoctonia. Annual Review of Phytopathology 32: 135–155.
  37. Vilgalys, R. & Hester, M. (1990) Rapid genetic identification and mapping of enzymatically amplified ribosomal DNA from several Cryptococcus species. Journal of Bacteriology 172: 4238–4246.
  38. Vilgalys, R. & Sun, B.L. (1994) Ancient and recent patterns of geographic speciation in the oyster mushroom Pleurotus revealed by phylogenetic analysis of ribosomal DNA-sequences. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 91: 7832.
  39. Vojvodić, M., Tanović, B., Mitrović, P., Vico, I. & Bulajić, A. (2021) Waitea circinata var. zeae causing root rot of cabbage and oilseed rape. Plant disease 105 (4): 787–796. https://doi.org/10.1094/PDIS-05-20-0942-RE
  40. Warcup, J.H. & Talbot, P.H.B. (1962) Ecology and identity of mycelia isolated from soil. Transactions of the British Mycological Society 45: 495–518.
  41. White, T.J., Bruns, T., Lee, S. & Taylor, J. (1990) Amplification and direct sequencing of fungal ribosomal RNA genes for phylogenetics. In: Innes, M.A., Gelfand, D.H., Sninsky, J.J. & White, T.J. (Eds.) PCR protocols: a guide to methods and applications. Academic Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, pp. 315–322.
  42. Zhang, W., Nan, Z.B., Liu, G.D., Hu, M.J., Gao, Z.Y. & Li, M. (2014) First Report of Leaf and Sheath Spot Caused by Waitea circinata var. zeae on Paspalum vaginatum and Zoysia tenuifolia in China. Plant disease 98 (10): 1436. https://doi.org/10.1094/PDIS-04-14-0404-PDN
  43. Zoller, S., Scheidegger, C. & Sperisen, C. (1999) PCR primers for the amplification of mitochondrial small subunit ribosomal DNA of lichen-forming Ascomycetes. The Lichenologist 31: 511–516. https://doi.org/10.1006/lich.1999.0220

How to Cite

Rana, S. & Singh, S.K. (2025) A new species of Waitea described and illustrated based on morphology and phylogeny from Western Ghats, India. Phytotaxa 700 (3): 269–278. https://doi.org/10.11646/phytotaxa.700.3.3