Morphological characters and molecular data reveal ten new forest macrofungi species from Hebei Province, North China

Abstract

China has a complex and diverse forest ecological environment, which breeds abundant forest macrofungi, including some edible, medicinal, and poisonous species. During the investigations of macrofungi in the Saihanba National Nature Reserve, North China, we collected abundant specimens of Agaricales and Polyporales within the Agaricomycetes. Based on the morphological characters and molecular evidence of DNA sequences including the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) regions, the large subunit of nuclear ribosomal RNA gene (nLSU), the small subunit of mitochondrial rRNA gene (mtSSU), the small subunit of nuclear ribosomal RNA gene (nuSSU), the largest subunit of RNA polymerase II (RPB1), the second largest subunit of RNA polymerase II gene (RPB2), the β-tubulin gene (TUB), and the translation elongation factor 1-α gene (TEF1), this study identifies ten species of Agaricales and Polyporales new to science, viz. Cyanosporus subpopuli, Gelatinofungus betulina, Lycoperdon pseudoperlatum, Macrocystidia hebeiensis, Mycena subbrunnea, M. subpura, M. variispora, M. violocea-ardesiaca, Picipes griseus, and Pleuroflammula hebeiensis. Detailed morphological descriptions, fruiting bodies, and microscopic structure diagrams of these ten novel species are provided.

Keywords

• Agaricomycetes
• macrofungi
• new taxa
• phylogeny
• taxonomy