Pezicula neosporulosa sp. nov. (Helotiales, Ascomycota), an endophytic fungus associated with Abies spp. in China and Europe

• A novel ascomycetous endophytic fungus (Pezicula neosporulosa) was described.
• Molecular phylogeny of Pezicula species was carried out based on four unlinked loci.
• The colony appearance was highly variable in endophytic P. neosporulosa isolates.

A new species of Pezicula, P. neosporulosa associated with Abies alba in the Netherlands and A. beshanzuensis in China is described, illustrated and compared to its sister species P. sporulosa, P. cinnamomea and P. eucrita. Morphologically, P. neosporulosa is shown to be similar to P. sporulosa both in sexual and asexual sporulating structures. However, from China the species is only known from endophytic isolates, and sporulating structures were never obtained in them. In contrast to the three sister species, the new species does not produce microconidia directly from ascospores or from macroconidia, but only from conidiophores in conidiomata. Moreover, the colony appearance is highly variable in endophytic isolates. Bayesian, maximum parsimony and maximum-likelihood phylogenetic analyses based on four unlinked loci (internal transcribed spacer, RPB2, TEF-1α and β-tubulin) in concatenated datasets confirmed that all isolates in P. neosporulosa were well separated from closely allied species with high bootstrap value and posterior probability. Taken together, the molecular and morphological evidence supports the introduction of P. neosporulosa as a novel taxon.