A new nematode-destroying Harposporium with slender helieoid conidia

Among the hyphomycetous endoparasites destructive to eelworms that abound in slowly decaying plant materials, as well as in agar plate cultures earlier inoculated with partly decomposed vegetable detritus, Harposporium anguillulae Lohde emend. Zopf (1888) is observed much more frequently than allied forms. In seeking an explanation for this more frequent occurrence it would seem highly significant that H. anguillulae nearly always gives rise, within the dead host animal, to a considerable number of chlamydospores capable of persisting through long northern winters and other unfavorable periods; whereas chlamydospores are presumably absent in 10 of the 11 parasites hitherto described as additional members of the genus erected by L o h d e (1874). Of the several species devoid of chlamydospores, some appear entirely lacking in visible protective modification for enduring through adverse times; while others have such limited protection as is provided, for example, by the slightly indurated portions of assimilative mycelium found in H. diceraeum Drechsler (1959) and H. dicorymbum Drechsler (1963), or by the cylindrical arthrospores so far known to occur only in H. bysm,atosporum (Drechsler (1954). A recently described species, H. cycloides Drechsler (1968), produces well-differentiated chlamydospores, though much less constantly and less abundantly than H. anguillulae. Scanty, haphazard development of chlamydospores likewise occurs in a fungus that merits presentation as a new congeneric species under a specific epithet compounded of two words (XŜ TOV ansTpa) meaning "slender" and " coil," respectively.