Extremotolerant rock inhabiting black fungi from Italian monumental sites

A wide sampling for isolating highly destructive and extremotolerant black fungi was performed from Italian monuments in selected historical sites which include the “Cortile della Pigna”, Vatican Museum and the St Peter colonnade (Vatican City State), the monumental cemetery of Bonaria (Cagliari), and other monuments in the city of Cagliari. Thirty out of seventy-four strains isolated were identified basing on ITS Blastn comparison. Based on multilocus phylogeny and morphological data, one new genus and species Lithophila guttulata, five new species Knufia marmoricola, K. vaticanii, K. karalitana, K. mediterranea and Exophiala bonariae, order Chaetothyriales and one new genus and species, Saxophila tyrrhenica, and two new species Vermiconia calcicola and Devriesia sardiniae, order Capnodiales, were proposed. Ecological considerations are put forward.