Recent conceptual, technological and methodological advances in phylogenetics have enabled increasingly robust statistical species delimitation in studies of biodiversity. As the variety of evidence purporting species diversity has increased, so too have the kinds of tools and inferential power of methods for delimiting species. Here, we showcase an organismal system for a data-rich, comparativ...

The species recognition and identification of aspergilli and their teleomorphs is discussed. A historical overview of the taxonomic concepts starting with the monograph of Raper & Fennell (1965) is given. A list of taxa described since 2000 is provided. Physiological characters, particularly growth rates and the production of extrolites, often show differences that reflect phylogenetic species ...

The Leishmania genus comprises up to 35 species, some with status still under discussion. The multilocus sequence typing (MLST)--extensively used for bacteria--has been proposed for pathogenic trypanosomatids. For Leishmania, however, a detailed analysis and revision on the taxonomy is still required. We have partially sequenced four housekeeping genes--glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD),...

Common and dwarf bunt of wheat are recognized as being caused by three closely related species, Tilletia caries and T. laevis as common bunt, and T. controversa as dwarf bunt. The morphological characteristics of two species including T. controversa and T. caries were studied from wheat grown in two provinces of Iran, Lorestan and Chaharmahal–o-Bakhtiari duri...

The systematics and speciation literature is rich with discussion relating to the potential for gene tree/species tree discordance. Numerous mechanisms have been proposed to generate discordance, including differential selection, long-branch attraction, gene duplication, genetic introgression, and/or incomplete lineage sorting. For speciose clades in which divergence has occurred recently and r...

Aeromonas media is an opportunistic pathogen for human and animals mainly found in aquatic habitats and which has been noted for significant genomic and phenotypic heterogeneities. We aimed to better understand the population structure and diversity of strains currently affiliated to A. media and the related species A. rivipollensis. Forty-one strains were included in a population study integra...

Laevicaudatan branchiopods, also called ‘smooth clam shrimps’ or ’pea shrimps’, are rare crustaceans found exclusively in temporary, small freshwater bodies, which stay dry most of the year. Only 42 laevicaudatan species have been described so far, 90% belong to genus Lynceus. The first multilocus phylogeny group is provided here, based on 15 Lynceus from North and South America, Europe, Africa...

Multilocus variable number tandem repeat analysis (MLVA) is a subtyping technique for characterizing human pathogenic bacteria such as enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) O157. We determined the phylogeny of 202 epidemiologically unrelated EHEC O157:H7/H- clinical isolates through 8 MLVA loci obtained in Germany during 1987-2008. Biodiversity in the loci ranged from 0.66 to 0.90. Four of ...

A combined phylogenetic and multilocus DNA sequence analysis of 26 Pseudomonas stutzeri strains distributed within the 9 genomovars of the species has been performed. Type strains of the two most closely related species (P. balearica, former genomovar 6, and P. mendocina), together with P. aeruginosa, as the type species of the genus, have been included in the study. The extremely high genetic ...

Three new species of Phyllosticta, P. hostae on Hosta plantaginea (China), P. schimae on Schima superba (China), and P. ilicis-aquifolii on Ilex aquifolium (UK), are described and illustrated in this study. They are compared with morphologically similar and phylogenetically closely related species. A polyphasic approach using phylogeny, host association, disease symptoms, colony and morphologic...