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Reassessment of rust fungi on weeping willows in the A mericas and description of M elampsora ferrinii sp. nov.
Author(s) -
Toome M.,
Aime M. C.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
plant pathology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.928
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1365-3059
pISSN - 0032-0862
DOI - 10.1111/ppa.12237
Subject(s) - biology , rust (programming language) , herbarium , willow , botany , fungus , spore , salicaceae , agaricales , host (biology) , taxonomy (biology) , woody plant , ecology , computer science , programming language
Rust fungi in the genus M elampsora usually cause disease on hosts in the Salicaceae. Identification of M elampsora species is often complicated due to few differences in spore morphology and little publicly available comparative sequence data. Weeping willow trees (primarily S alix babylonica and its hybrids) have been reported to be infected by 11 M elampsora species; however, most of these records are based on morphological characterization. New collections of rust fungi on weeping willows from the central USA were analysed using a combination of morphology, ITS and LSU r DNA sequencing, and host data to determine that they represent an undescribed rust fungus, M elampsora ferrinii sp. nov. Additional studies of herbarium material revealed that M . ferrinii has occasionally been collected but identified as M . epitea . In addition to N orth A merica, M . ferrinii is also present in S outh A merica and has been infecting weeping willows there since at least the 1990s.