The Egyptian Ascomycota 1: Genus Aspergillus

Abstract

Since Pier Antonio Micheli described and published genus Aspergillus in Nova Plantarum Genera in 1729 the genus attracted an immense interest. The published Egyptian literature on the genus is scattered and fragmentary. By screening the available sources of information since 1921, it was possible to figure out a range of 150 taxa that could be representing genus Aspergillus in Egypt up to the present time. Ten species of Aspergillus were introduced as type materials from Egypt since 1964 till now.Recorded taxa were assigned to 5 subgenera and 25 sections. This article includes Aspergillus species that are known to Egypt, provides a comprehensive checklist of species isolated from Egypt and provisional key to the identification of reported taxa is given. Although the present study will add some new data to our information concerning the Ascomycota of Egypt, this work must be considered as a provisional one always waiting for continuous supplementation.

Keywords

• biodiversity
• check-list
• herbaria catalogues
• literature
• moubasher
• novel taxa
• taxonomy