Genetic Variation of Corollospora maritima sensu lato from Mexico

Genetic Variation of Corollospora maritima sensu lato from Mexico

Alejandra Barrios1*, Patricia Velez1, Laura Espinosa-Asuar2, Akira Nakagiri3

1Instituto de Biología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 04510, Mexico City, Mexico

2Instituto de Ecología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 04510, Mexico City, Mexico

3Division of Genetic Resource Preservation and Evaluation, Fungus/Mushroom Resource and Research Center, Tottori University, Tottori 680-8553, Japan

*Email: fbarrios208@outlook.com

Corollospora maritima sensu lato is a ubiquitous marine arenicolous fungus in sandy beaches worldwide. This species is identified by ascospore, asci and ascomata morphology. However, the occurrence of three cryptic genetic lineages has been reported in the coastline of Mexico, raising the question whether C. maritima represents a species complex. So, a multi-loci analyses is needed to test this hypothesis. Herein, we evaluated the genetic variation within 40 isolates of C. maritima sensu lato collected in the Pacific Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of California; in addition to reference sequences retrieved from public databases. So, several taxonomically informative regions were analyzed to perform phylogenetic analysis. As a result, we identified distinct genetic lineages that could represent individual taxonomic entities. This result was confirmed through the preliminary analysis of morphology of the isolates. We also confirmed the lack of geographic patterns in the clustered sequences. This investigation highlights the importance of multi-loci analyses for species delimitation of a marine arenicolous cosmopolitan species.