Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2005, Page 76

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COPROPHILOUS FUNGI FROM THE FAROE ISLANDS
Thelebolus stercoreus Tode : Fr.
Ey, Ku, St, Va, Vi. These records refer to
‘classical’ T. stercoreus, with more or less
globose cleistohymenial ascomata, with a
single, large, ascus up to 250 x 200 pm,
with very many spores (estimates of up to
or more than 2000). 32, 36(H), 38, 40,
42, 44, 48, 49/04.
De Hoog et al. (2005), on the basis of
molecular studies, accept only four spe-
cies of Thelebolus T. microsporus, T.
stercoreus and two new species described
from biomats in Antarctica. They found
that many cultures from phenotypically
very different teleomorphs are indistin-
guishable. The range of species found to
be molecularly indistinguishable from T.
stercoreus s.s., as described above, in-
cluded cultures from uniascal and polyas-
cal types, with small to large asci, and few
to very many-spored types. Other records
of Thelebolus species from the Faroese
collections are listed below, identified as
far as possible from descriptions in the
literature, which has always been diffi-
cult. After de Hoog et al. (2005), it may
well be that they can all be recorded as
T. stercoreus. It may, however, be useful
to distinguish between the morphospecies,
since there do appear to be ecological dis-
tinctions. T. stercoreus is very frequent on
hare dung (on 51 % samples), but was ob-
served on less than 10 % of sheep (Rich-
ardson, 2001), while T. nanus was almost
twice as frequent on sheep than hare dung
(43 % vs 26 %). T. polysporus occurs on
about 20 % of rabbit and hare pellets, but
on less than 10 % of sheep, deer and cat-
tle, and some of the other poorly charac-
terised and less frequent species, e.g. T.
caninus, T. crustaceus and T. dubius, are
often reported from the droppings of her-
bivorous birds.
Thelebolus caninus (Auersw.) Jeng &
J.C. Krug
Vi. Limited material, seen only once, as-
sociated with other Thelebolus-Yike apoth-
ecia, with broad clavate/globose asci, 65-
75 x 35 pm, with a distinct, thickened sub-
apical ring. Asci 32-spored, with hyaline
ellipsoid spores 6x3 pm. In the absence
of further material firm identification was
not possible. 43/04.
Thelebolus dubius (Boud.) Doveri and T.
dubius var. lagopi (Rea) Doveri
Ey, St. 39, 32/04.
Thelebolus nanus Heimerl
Bo, Ey, Ku, Va, Vi. Globose cleistohyme-
nial ascomata, with a single, small, ascus
40-80 x 30-60 pm, with very many spores.
36, 37, 43(H), 44, 46, 47, 49/04.
Thelebolus polysporus (R Karst.) Y. Ota-
ni & Kanzawa
Bo, Ey, Va, Vi. Similar in morpology and
stature to T. nanus, but with several asci
in each ascoma. 36, 38, 41, 43, 46, 47,
49/04.
Sordariales
Bombardioidea stercoris (DC.) N. Lun-
dq. (Fig. 7)
Bo, Va. Species of this genus seem to
be widespread but infrequent. Lundqvist
(1972) notes that they ‘are mostly confined