Dissophora
DISSOPHORA Thaxter, 1914 [Botanical Gazette (Crawfordsville) 58:361]; 2 spp. (Thaxter, 1914; Gams and Carreiro, 1989)
Colony with a garlic odor, composed of aerial hyphae or stolons that are septate and collapse when mature. Sporangiophores tapered, bearing multispored sporangia, with a deliquescent wall; columella septum-like to slightly convex. Sporangiospores more or less angular to globose. Chlamydospores intercalary or terminal. Zygospores unknown.
Type species: D. decumbens
Species of Dissophora:
D. decumbens Thaxter, 1914 [Botanical Gazette (Crawfordsville) 58:361] (Thaxter, 1914; O’Donnell, 1979; Gams and Carreiro, 1989).
D. nadsonii Philippov = Umbelopsis isabellina q.v. fide W. Gams and Carreiro (1989).
D. ornata (W. Gams) W. Gams, 1989 (in Gams and Carreiro, Studies in Mycology 31:91).
= Mortierella ornata W. Gams, 1983 (in Veerkamp and W. Gams, Caldasia 13:715) (Veerkamp and Gams, 1983).
The production of septate stolons is a diagnostic character of the genus Dissphora. Both species of Dissophora grow and sporulate best below 20 C (Veerkamp and Gams, 1983; Gams and Carreiro, 1989). Thaxter (1914) did not mention the temperature requirements of D. decumbens (Benny, 1995). A third species of Dissophora, D. nadsonii, is Umbelopsis isabellina according to Gams and Carreiro (1989).
Bibliography
Benny, G.L. 1995. Classical morphology in zygomycete taxonomy. Canad. J. Bot. 73(Suppl. 1): S725-S730.
Gams, W., and M.M. Carreiro. 1989. Two new species of Mortierella and rediscovery of Thaxter’s Dissophora decumbens. Studies in Mycology 31:85-91.
Thaxter, R. 1914. New or peculiar Zygomycetes. 3: Blakeslea, Dissophora, and Haplosporangium nova genera. Botanical Gazette (Crawfordsville) 58:353-366.
Verkamp, J., and W. Gams. 1983. Los Hongos de Columbia—VIII. Some new species of soil fungi from Columbia. Caldesia 13:709-717.
Updated Feb 11, 2009