Vishniacozyma floricola sp. nov., a flower-related tremellomycetous yeast species from Europe

During the course of two independent studies conducted in Hungary and Spain, four conspecific yeast strains were isolated from flowers of different plant species. DNA sequences of two barcoding regions, the D1/D2 domain of the LSU rRNA gene and the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region (ITS1-5.8S rRNA gene-ITS2), revealed that the four strains represent an undescribed <i>Vishniacozyma</i> (family <i>Bulleribasidiaceae</i>, <i>Basidiomycota</i>) species. In terms of pairwise sequence similarities and according to our phylogenetic analyses of the concatenated DNA sequences of the ITS region and the D1/D2 domain of the LSU rRNA gene, the undescribed species is most closely related to <i>Vishniacozyma melezitolytica</i>, a yeast species of phylloplane origin. The novel species differs from the type strain of <i>V. melezitolytica</i> by 8 substitutions and 3 insertion/deletion (indels) and 11 substitutions and 5 indels along the D1/D2 domain of the LSU rRNA gene and the ITS region, respectively. In addition to the DNA sequence divergences, the two species differ in some physiological characters as well. We propose the species <i>Vishniacozyma floricola</i> sp. nov. to accommodate the above-noted strains (holotype, NCAIM Y.02320; isotype, CBS 18939; MycoBank number, 856028).