Molecular and Phenotypic Descriptions of Cystodermella cinnabarina from Western Himalaya: A New Genus for Pakistan

Cystodermella cinnabarina is reported here for the first time from the moist temperate forests of western Himalaya and is the first collection of a Cystodermella from Pakistan. This species is redescribed here using morphological and molecular data. The phylogenetic analysis which is based on internal transcribed spacers (ITS) showed that the Pakistani collection clustered distinctly with similar European sequences in the Cystodermella clade. The Italian and north European sequences of this species clustered in two separate subclades and the Pakistani sequences closely matched the Italian sequences. It is evident that the Pakistani population has a very close evolutionary affinity with the Italian individuals rather than those from northern Europe. The species is distributed in Europe, in North America, and now in the western Himalaya of Asia. 1. Introduction Cystodermella is small genus which contains only 12 species [1]. Cystodermella is characterized by having lamellae regularly attached to the stipe, a nonpersistent, scaly annulus, hyaline, smooth, and most importantly inamyloid basidiospores [2, 3]. This genus was segregated from Cystoderma Fayod not only on the basis of morphology and colour reaction (inamyloid basidiospores) but molecular findings also supported phenotypic differences (variation of ITS and LSU markers) [4, 5]. Harmaja [2] described this new genus on the basis of morphoanatomical characters and later many researchers used molecular data to determine the relationship of these two genera [6]. After Moncalvo et al. [5], Saar et al. [3] described Cystoderma and Cystodermella as distinct monophyletic genera on the basis of LSS and ITS barcodes. The genus Cystodermella is widely distributed in Europe, North America, and Asia but Cystodermella cinnabarina, which is a conspecific with Cystoderma cinnabarinum, has not been described before from Asia. Western Himalaya, the part of Himalaya that lies in Pakistan, is floristically rich with more than 750 plant species of coniferous mixed with deciduous vegetation and more than 300 macrofungi [7, 8]. These forests are renowned for their species richness of euagarics [7, 9–11]. Recently, Razaq et al. [12, 13] described a few species from this area using internal transcribed spacers of ribosomal DNA and elucidated their phylogeographic relationship with European collections. During a field tour in 2010, a colorful white-gilled mushroom was collected which was identified as Cystoderma sp. in the field and anatomical and molecular studies showed that it is Cystodermella cinnabarina. This genus had