Morphology and phylogeny of a new species of Trichomerium from North-Western Himalayas, India

The present paper describes Trichomerium bhatii , a new species in the family Trichomeriaceae ( Chaetothyriales , Ascomycota). This taxon was isolated as epiphyte from dead bark of Prunus cerasoides collected from North-Western Himalayan region of India. The identity of isolate was based on asexual-morphs, cultural characteristics and phylogenetic analyses of partial nuclear ribosomal 28S large subunit and complete internal transcribed spacer rDNA sequence data with high statistical support value. The new taxon has turned out to be distinct from other known species in the genus showing 95.26% (624/655 bp) identity with closely related T. gloeosporum MFLUCC10-0087 on the basis of rDNA internal transcribed spacer region. A brief description of asexual-morph of T. bhatii with morphological and molecular data is provided. To the best of our knowledge this is the first report on this genus from India. The type specimen is deposited in the Ajrekar Mycological Herbarium (as voucher culture) and ex type cultures are deposited in Indian Type Culture Collection (ITCC-WDCM 430), New Delhi, and National Fungal Culture Collection of India (NFCCI-WDCM 932).