Novel Taxa within Nectriaceae: Cosmosporella gen. nov. and Aquanectria sp. nov. from Freshwater Habitats in China

Abstract To clarify phylogenetic relationships among Aquanectria, Cosmospora, Fusicolla and other related taxa in Nectriaceae, we examined detailed morphological characters and performed cladistic analyses of a concatenated dataset based on the ITS, LSU and β-tubulin DNA sequences of fungal specimens collected from freshwater habitats in China. A new genus, Cosmosporella, is described to accommodate C. olivacea as its type species. Cosmospora obscura is transferred to Cosmosporella based on morphological similarities and phylogenetic support. Aquanectria jacinthicolor, a freshwater lignicolous taxon, characterized by its orange ascomata and ellipsoid ascospores with broad paraphyses is a newly described freshwater species. This species has affinities with other two known species of Aquanectria and can be distinguished based on ascospore morphology. A specimen with sexual morph of Fusicolla aquaeductuum is reported for the first time.