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Citation for Study 18596

About Citation title: "Choosing one name for pleomorphic fungi: the example of Aspergillus v. Eurotium, Neosartorya and Emericella".
About Study name: "Choosing one name for pleomorphic fungi: the example of Aspergillus v. Eurotium, Neosartorya and Emericella".
About This study is part of submission 18596 (Status: Published).

Citation

Taylor J., G?ker M., & Pitt J.I. 2016. Choosing one name for pleomorphic fungi: the example of Aspergillus v. Eurotium, Neosartorya and Emericella. Taxon, .

Authors

  • Taylor J.
  • G?ker M.
  • Pitt J.I.

Abstract

Now that each fungus may have only one name, mycologists must choose between genus names formerly applied to asexual and sexual reproductive modes, a choice that often influences the breadth of genotypic and phenotypic diversity in a genus, and even its monophyly. We chose the asexual genus Aspergillus to examine the problems involved in this choice because (a) 11 sexual generic names are associated with it and (b) phenotypic variation and genetic divergence within sexual genera are low but between sexual genera are high, so that combining them will lessen the information conveyed by the genus name and could lead to inconsistency in genetic divergence among genera. Two proposals have been published concerning this problem as it relates to Aspergillus: one advocates a broad concept, referred to in this paper as ?Wide Aspergillus?, which embraces as many Aspergillus species as possible while maintaining Penicillium as a separate genus; while the second, referred to as ?Narrow Aspergillus?, preserves this genus for a much smaller group of closely related species and retains many of the sexual genera. Phylogenetic analyses detailed here show that, to be monophyletic, Wide Aspergillus must embrace several genera without Aspergillus morphology, including Penicillium, Phialosimplex and Polypaecilum. Likelihood ratio tests reject a Wide Aspergillus that excludes Phialosimplex and Polypaecilum. Phylogenetic Rank Boundary Optimization, which employs the genetic divergence measure, maximum subtree height, to assesses inconsistency in the ranking of genera and species, shows that Narrow Aspergillus provides a more consistent taxonomy than Wide Aspergillus. In the example of Aspergillus, retention of sexual names and application of a Narrow Aspergillus, as opposed to adopting a Wide Aspergillus, results in genera that convey far more precise morphological and physiological information, that are monophyletic, and that exhibit greater taxonomic consistency.

Keywords

Aspergillus; Eurotium; Penicillium; taxonomy; generic concept; phylogeny

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  • Canonical resource URI: http://purl.org/phylo/treebase/phylows/study/TB2:S18596
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