Two New Soil Fungi Discovered in Jiangxi Bamboo Forest

A team of Chinese mycologists has added two new species to the Chaetosphaeriaceae family, uncovering them in soil samples collected from a bamboo forest on Xiangyun Mountain in Jiangxi Province, China. The findings were published in MycoKeys volume 140 (pages 131–146) and highlight how little we still know about micro‑ascomycete diversity in understudied ecosystems.¹.net]

Chaetosphaeriaceae is a group of micro-ascomycetes widely distributed across diverse ecosystems worldwide. Members are commonly found on decaying wood, leaf litter and moist soil; however, their diversity in soil habitats remains poorly characterised, especially in understudied bamboo forest ecosystems such as those at Xiangyun Mountain.¹.net]

The researchers—Weishuai Yu, Xueyuan Wang, Dayu Wu, Hongfeng Wang, Xuefeng Yuan, and Yueming Wu—isolated chaetosphaeriaceous fungi from soil samples taken within the bamboo stand. They performed maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference phylogenetic analyses using concatenated sequence data from three nuclear loci: the internal transcribed spacer (ITS), the large subunit ribosomal RNA gene (LSU), and the translation elongation factor 1-α (tef1‑α). This multi‑locus approach confirmed that the isolates belong to two distinct lineages not represented among known taxa.¹.net]

The newly described species are named Chloridium jiangxiense and Paragongromeriza jiangxiensis. Detailed morphological descriptions—including spore size, shape, and ornamentation—and high‑resolution micrographs of both species are provided in the publication, allowing for easy comparison with other members of Chaetosphaeriaceae.¹.net]