Project description:A historical review of the Fannia carbonaria-group is provided and three new species are described from China: Fannia fani Wang & Wu, sp. n., Fannia nitidiventris Wang & Zhang, sp. n. and Fannia submaculata Wang & Zhao, sp. n.. One species, Fannia norvegica Ringdahl, 1934, is recorded for the first time from China. Illustrations of male terminalia of these four species and a taxonomic key to the males of known species in the group are given. The Fannia carbonaria-group now includes 30 species distributed in the Holarctic Region and northern part of the Oriental Region.
Project description:Wildfires play a critical role in maintaining biodiversity and shaping ecosystem structure in fire-prone regions, and successional patterns involving numerous plant and fungal species in post-fire events have been elucidated. Evidence is growing to support the idea that some post-fire fungi can form endophytic/endolichenic relationships with plants and lichens. However, no direct observations of fire-associated fungal-moss interactions have been visualized to date. Therefore, physical interactions between a post-fire fungus, Pholiota carbonaria, and a moss, Polytrichum commune, were visually examined under laboratory conditions. Fungal appressoria were visualized on germinating spores and living protonemata within two weeks of inoculation in most growth chambers. Appressoria were pigmented, reddish gold to braun, and with a penetration peg. Pigmented, reddish gold to braun fungal hyphae were associated with living tissue, and numerous mature rhizoids contained fungal hyphae at six months. Inter-rhizoidal hyphae were pigmented and reddish gold to braun, but no structures were visualized on mature gametophyte leaf or stem tissues. Based on our visual evidence and previous work, we provide additional support for P. carbonaria having multiple strategies in how it obtains nutrients from the environment, and provide the first visual documentation of these structures in vitro.
