A. fallax has bigger ascospores than vibratilis, but is J+.

We often put quickly some collections with brown ascospores in the genus Amphisphaeria and perhaps another genus could be considered.

But I've no idea immediatly.

Alain

Hi Nick,

did you test it in Indian Ink? Sheaths are often invisible in H2O or deliquescent after a few minutes. I guess it belongs to Amphisphaeria, but I do not know this one too.

regards,
björn

Hi Björn, Alain and everyone,

I've tried searching around in a few other genera - Nothing seems close yet, but I'll keep digging (many other genera with 2-celled brown spores seem to have bitunicate asci which I assume cannot be the case here)

I hadn't tried indian ink up until now (I never before had a problem seeing sheaths in water) - Now I can confirm that every ascospore has one!

It was also interesting to see that my spores don't turn greenish in Meltzer's unlike Björn's collection. Also the guttules seem much more disrupted.

Björn - Out of interest, I don't suppose you tried Lugol's with your collection?

Amitiés,

Nick

 

 

 

Hi Nick,

I am always working with Lugol for Sordariomycetes / Pezizomycetes and Barals for Leotiomycetes. I use Melzer only for some long-spored ascomycetes with invisible septations, like the Conioscyphascus or Tubeufia.

I think that most Amphisphaeria species have spores getting a green colour in Lugol / Melzer.

Maybe you can send a sample of your strange collection and I will see what I can do with it.

regards,
björn

Hi Björn,

OK, so that explains why your guttules are still intact - Not sure why I assumed your image was mounted in Melzer's.

Thanks for the (brave!) offer - I'll send it over after the weekend. I've severely butchered the specimen with my poor scalpel skills, but I'm sure you'll find something.

Best regards,

Nick

 

Hi,

I am bumping this thread because I have presumably found the same species as Nick (Amphisphaeria bufonia) and thought it would be interesting to share my observations. Similar to what Nick has observed my fungus reacts red in Lugol and negativ in Melzer. However, pretreatment with KOH before adding Melzer does indeed trigger a clearly blue reaction. Please see the attached PDF.

Best wishes,
Gernot

Hi Gernot,

Thanks for the input to this thread. Yours looks to be the same species as mine - I assume yours was on Quercus too?

I didn't pretreat the material with KOH (yet), but perhaps Björn did?

I never found a convincing description for the ascus reaction in A.bufonia, but Wang Aptroot & Hyde describe it as J+ (though they didn't examine type material).

So is A.bufonia hemiamyloid or is ours something else? I never managed to find an answer!

I found this species at two other sites since starting this thread, so presumably it is fairly common. 

Best wishes,

Nick

 

 

Hi Nick,
I never encountered your fungus but I think you can safely call it A. bufonia until the type is revised and checked on the hemiamyloidity and presence of a sheath around ascospores. The sheath is already conspicuous on your image 2 where ascospores are tightly packed in the ascus. Such wide sheaths often are overlooked in water because the limits of the sheath extend beyond the place where one expects to find them. India ink is very useful fro that purpose but not always easy to use, it's better to dilute it, but not too much!

Cheers,
Jacques

Hi Nick,

yes, that's true, my fungus was on Quercus robur. It was a corticated branch on the ground.

Best wishes,
Gernot

I have examined the species Nick had sent to me. I will show the results this evening, I am on work now.

Regards björn

Here are the photos of the Amphisphaeria collection.

Thanks everyone for the additional information.

Jacques - I'll use the name A.bufonia for now (at least until someone digs up the type specimen). Thanks for the tip for observing sheaths in the ascus, I hadn't noticed that previously.

Nick