Lophiostoma jeollanense H. Liu & H. Sang 2025, sp. nov.

Lophiostoma jeollanense H. Liu & H. Sang sp. nov. Fig. 20 Etymology. Name refers to Jeolla Province in Korea, the place it was isolated from. Description. Lophiostoma jeollanense differs from its closest phylogenetic neighbour, L. japonicum (KT 573) by unique fixed alleles in three loci: ITS positions 25 (A), 26 (G), 31 (indel), 40 (indel), 70 (C), 91 (C), 93 (G), 114 (G), 132 (T), 134 (A), 136 (C), 138 (T), 142 (G), 364 (G), 365 (A), 368 (T), 383 (T), 407 (C); LSU positions 41 (T), 43 (C), 155 (T), 614 (C); TEF 1 positions 42 (C), 127 (T), 128 (C), 129 (C), 162 (T), 222 (C), 225 (C), 240 (T), 249 (T), 318 (T), 336 (C), 342 (C), 351 (T), 372 (C), 399 (T), 405 (C), 408 (T), 442 (G), 465 (C), 477 (G), 492 (C), 528 (C), 537 (C), 663 (T), 669 (C), 672 (G), 693 (C), 705 (C), 708 (T), 735 (T), 748 (G), 780 (G), 792 (C). Type. Korea • South Jeolla Province, Hwasun, isolated from roots of Zoysia japonica, October 2020, H. Liu and H. Sang, holotype CMML 20-43 H (permanently preserved in a metabolically inactive state), ex-holotype CMML 20-43, ex-isotype CMML 20-90. Culture characteristics. Colony reaching 22.24 mm diam. on PDA after 7 days in darkness at 25 ° C, surface white to light brown, reverse side yellow, mycelia dense (Fig. 20 a). Notes. Lophiostoma jeollanense did not sporulate on synthetic media. Chlamydospore-like structures within mycelia were observed on OA after two weeks (Fig. 20 b – e). In phylogenetic analysis of the genus Lophiostoma, based on combined sequences of ITS, LSU, TEF 1 and RPB 2, strains CMML 20-43 and CMML 20-90 formed a distinct single clade with a high statistical support (96 % / 1.00) (Fig. 21), sister to clade comprising an ex-type strain (KT 573) and representative strains (KT 686 -1, UESTCC 23.0040 and MFLUCC 17-2450) of L. japonicum. Based on nucleotide sequences of three loci, ex-holotype strain of L. jeollanense (CMML 20-43) was different from the ex-type strain of L. japonicum (KT 573): ITS sequence identities = 494 / 513 (96.30 %), gaps = 2; LSU sequence identities = 851 / 855 (99.53 %); TEF sequence identities = 835 / 868 (96.20 %). The species L. japonicum (previously Biappendiculispora japonica) was found as a saprophyte on dead stems of unknown herbaceous plants with its sexual morph (Thambugala et al. 2015), whereas strains CMML 20-43 and CMML 20-90 were isolated from roots of Z. japonica as a potential endophyte and only chlamydospore-like structures were observed in these strains. Therefore, Lophiostoma jeollanense sp. nov. was introduced in this study to accommodate CMML 20-43 and CMML 20-90 in the genus Lophiostoma.