A NEMATODE‐DESTROYING HYPHOMYCETE FORMING PARALLEL MULTISEPTATE HYALINE CONIDIA IN CIRCULAR ARRANGEMENT

In several Petri plate cultures that had been inoculated with decaying plant detritus from central Maryland, a fungus developed which attacks nematodes by extending a rather wide infection‐tube either from an adhesive hyphal protuberance, or, more often, from a subglobose adhesive cell produced terminally on its elongate‐ellipsoid pluriseptate hyaline conidia. A number (sometimes three) of these conidia are borne simultaneously in peripheral positions on the broadly rounded tip of the colorless condiophore, and are directed upward, parallel to the conidiophore axis. From the segment immediately below its adhesive cell, each conidium puts forth laterally a flexible unicellular tubular appendage that grows downward approximately to the level of the spore attachment. The fungus is described as Haptocara latirostrum gen. n., sp. n. Although presumably belonging in the Moniliaceae, it shows no close kinship with the numerous interrelated clampless Hyphomycetes that have been made known as subsisting through capture of nematodes.