COMPARISON OF CULTURAL AND MORPHOLOGICAL CHARACTERS AND ITS SEQUENCESIN ANAMORPHS OF BOTRYOSPHAERIA AND RELATED TAXA

Anamorphs of 22 strains of botryosphaeriaceous fungi including Fusicoc cum spp., Diplodia spp., Sphaeropsis spp., and Lasiodiplodia theobroma e (teleomorph = Botryosphaeria rhodina) were compared utilizing conidi al characters, cultural morphology, growth rates and nucleotide sequen ces of the nuclear rDNA internal transcribed spacers ITS 1 and ITS 2. The ITS data shared consensus with morphological and cultural characte rs in separating 7 of the 22 strains. The 7 strains were placed into o ne of three groups that corresponded with the morphological species L. theobromae, S. sapinea, and F. luteum. Only partial consensus was ach ieved with the remaining 15 strains as ITS sometimes grouped together strains with uniform morphological and cultural characters and other t imes not. The ten Fusicoccum strains, identified as anamorphs of B. do thidea or B. ribis, were divided into two ITS groups and up to five gr oups based on traditional characters. The two putative B. ribis strain s were consistently grouped together and appear to represent a stable variant of B. dothidea. Two morphologically indistinguishable Sphaerop sis sp. strains, identified as anamorphs of B. obtusa, were separated into two ITS groups, one containing all S. sapinea strains and the oth er containing Diplodia mutila (teleomorph = B. stevensii) and D. querc ina. Conidial color, wall texture, septa number, size and shape as wel l as mycelial growth under different temperatures were consistent char acters within some presumed morphological species, and within some ITS groups, but none of the characters were universally informative. More over, conidial pleomorphy and plasticity of some morphological and cul tural characters posed problems for differentiating strains using trad itional characters, particularly with Sphaeropsis and Diplodia form-ge nera. The possibility that the ITS region is not informative at the sp ecies level for some of the taxa evaluated is considered.