Introducing the Consolidated Species Concept to resolve species in the Teratosphaeriaceae

The Teratosphaeriaceaerepresents a recently established family that includes numerous saprobic, extremophilic, human opportunistic, and plant pathogenic fungi. Partial DNA sequencedata of the 28S rRNA and RPB2 genes strongly support a separation of the Mycosphaerellaceaefrom the Teratosphaeriaceae, and also provide support for the Extremaceae and Neodevriesiaceae, two novel families including many extremophilicfungi that occur on a diversity of substrates. In addition, a multi-locus DNA sequencedataset was generated (ITS, LSU, Btub, Act, RPB2, EF-1α and Cal) to distinguish taxa in Mycosphaerellaand Teratosphaeriaassociated with leaf disease of Eucalyptus, leading to the introduction of 23 novel genera, five species and 48 new combinations. Species are distinguished based on a polyphasic approach, combining morphological, ecological and phylogenetic species concepts, named here as the Consolidated Species Concept (CSC). From the DNA sequencedata generated, we show that each one of the five coding genes tested, reliablyidentify most of the species present in this dataset (except species of Pseudocercospora). The ITS gene serves as a primary barcodelocus as it is easily generated and has the most extensive dataset available, while either Btub, EF-1α or RPB2 provide a useful secondary barcodelocus.