Drechslerosporium cornellii — a new genus

Drechslerosporium cornellii was described simultaneously as a new species and as the type of a new genus in the family Basidiobolaceae. The isolate ARSEF 7942 was obtained on 15 November 2005 from decaying plant remains in the Muriel B. Mundy Wildflower Garden at Cornell Plantations in Ithaca. The material is held by the USDA-ARS collection of entomopathogenic fungal cultures.

The colonies grow slowly at 25°C. The most distinctive characters concern asexual reproduction. A conidiophore ends in a swelling that takes part in the forcible discharge of a conidium. After separation, a distinct membranous fragment of the apparatus remains on the spore. Under unfavourable conditions the conidia may form finger-like chlamydospores directly. This combination of characters had not been recorded in the closest known genera.

Analysis of ITS, 28S and RPB2 sequences placed the isolate as a distinct lineage sister to Basidiobolus. Morphology and phylogeny together justified establishing the genus Drechslerosporium. Authorship of both the genus and the species reads B. Huang & Y. Nie. The species name was registered in MycoBank under the number MB 862733, and the epithet commemorates Ezra Cornell, founder of Cornell University.

The figure in the publication shows the structures at a scale of ten micrometres. It is not a photograph of a fruiting body to be found on a walk, because the organism is known from microscopic culture. "Forest litter" describes the source of isolation, not yet a full niche. It is not known how widely the species occurs or with which organisms it interacts in nature.

A discovery made more than twenty years after the sample was taken is a reminder of the value of culture collections. New questions, sequences and comparisons can bring a taxon out of an old isolate. Assessing threat is impossible without field data; this profile concerns a formal description and diagnostic characters, not potential applications.

A new genus is a hypothesis open to testing, not a prize for unusual appearance. It has to be distinguishable from its relatives by a coherent set of characters and by its position in an analysis. Additional isolates are particularly important, because the present description of the biology rests on a single strain. Repeated sampling in Ithaca and a review of other collections may reveal a wider range, variation in the structures, and earlier specimens hidden under the name Basidiobolus or as unidentified cultures. Any such material should be preserved in an accessible reference collection.

What the paper establishes

The 2026 description rests on one isolate, ARSEF 7942, collected in 2005 from decaying plant material in Cornell's Muriel B. Mundy Wildflower Garden. A modified inverted-plate method captured forcibly discharged propagules. Two characters distinguish Drechslerosporium (MB 862732) from Basidiobolus: membranous remains of the discharge apparatus stay attached to the conidium, and finger-like chlamydospores develop directly from primary conidia. D. cornellii is MB 862733. ITS, 28S and RPB2 placed it in a distinct lineage, but maximum-likelihood support for a key node was 54%, versus Bayesian posterior 0.99. Morphology strengthens the generic hypothesis, yet further isolates are needed to test variation, ecology and range.