Decorospora, a new genus for the marine ascomycete Pleospora gaudefroyi

In this paper, we investigate the phylogenetic placement of Pleospora gaudefroyi using partial SSU as well as ITS ribosomal DNA sequences. Both SSU and ITS data sets agreed in the placement of P. gaudefroyi. Parsimony and neighbor-joining analyses of each data set placed P. gaudefroyi within the Pleosporaceae with 100% bootstrap support. Pleospora gaudefroyi was sister taxon in the Pleosporaceae represented by Alternaria alternata, Cochliobolus sativus, Pleospora herbarum, Pyrenophora tritici-repentis and Setosphaeria rostrata. Pleospora gaudefroyi was separated from other genera in the Pleosporaceae in 94% of the bootstrap replicates in parsimony and neighbor-joining analyses. When P. gaudefroyi was constrained to monophyly with P. herbarum, all resulting trees were significantly worse than the optimal tree in both Kishino-Hasegawa and Shimodaira-Hasegawa tests. Pleospora gaudefroyi was therefore excluded from Pleospora, and transferred to the new genus Decorospora placed in the Pleosporaceae. Decorospora (Dothideomycetes) has characteristic ascospores enclosed in a sheath with 4-5 apical extensions. The distribution and substrate types for D. gaudefroyi are summarized and updated based on additional collections.