''Arachnomyces bostrychodes'' is a species of

infectious An infection is the invasion of tissues by pathogens, their multiplication, and the reaction of host tissues to the infectious agent and the toxins they produce. An infectious disease, also known as a transmissible disease or communicable dise ...

ascomycete Ascomycota is a phylum of the kingdom Fungi that, together with the Basidiomycota, forms the subkingdom Dikarya. Its members are commonly known as the sac fungi or ascomycetes. It is the largest phylum of Fungi, with over 64,000 species. The defi ...

fungus A fungus ( : fungi or funguses) is any member of the group of eukaryotic organisms that includes microorganisms such as yeasts and molds, as well as the more familiar mushrooms. These organisms are classified as a kingdom, separately from th ...

discovered in 2021 from clinical specimens of fungal strains in

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

USA The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

Etymology

The

specific Specific may refer to: * Specificity (disambiguation) * Specific, a cure or therapy for a specific illness Law * Specific deterrence, focussed on an individual * Specific finding, intermediate verdict used by a jury in determining the fina ...

epithet An epithet (, ), also byname, is a descriptive term (word or phrase) known for accompanying or occurring in place of a name and having entered common usage. It has various shades of meaning when applied to seemingly real or fictitious people, di ...

comes from the Greek ''βοστρυχος-'', meaning

curl cURL (pronounced like "curl", UK: , US: ) is a computer software project providing a library (libcurl) and command-line tool (curl) for transferring data using various network protocols. The name stands for "Client URL". History cURL was fi ...

, referencing the curly appearance of the reproductive

hyphae A hypha (; ) is a long, branching, filamentous structure of a fungus, oomycete, or actinobacterium. In most fungi, hyphae are the main mode of vegetative growth, and are collectively called a mycelium. Structure A hypha consists of one or ...

Morphology and asexual reproduction

''A. bostrychodes'' grows septate, hyaline, branched, vegetative

with smooth and thin walls, between 1 and 2 μm wide. The fertile hyphae are well-differentiated, arising as lateral branches from the vegetative hyphae, successively branching to form dense, tightly curled, sinuous clusters that are also between 1 and 2 μm wide, forming random

arthroconidia Arthroconidia are a type of fungal spore typically produced by segmentation of pre-existing fungal hyphae. Background These spores are asexual and are generally not as durable and environmentally persistent as, for instance, bacterial endospores o ...

both intercalary and terminally. The

conidia A conidium ( ; ), sometimes termed an asexual chlamydospore or chlamydoconidium (), is an asexual, non-motile spore of a fungus. The word ''conidium'' comes from the Ancient Greek word for dust, ('). They are also called mitospores due to the ...

measure 4–8 x 1–2 μm, are mostly curved and truncated at one or more commonly both ends; they are enteroarthric, hyaline, one-celled, smooth-walled, cylindrical, barrel-shaped; they are finger-shaped when terminal. The conidia are separated from the fertile hyphae by rhexolysis. There have been no observations of

chlamydospores A chlamydospore is the thick-walled large resting spore of several kinds of fungi, including Ascomycota such as '' Candida'', Basidiomycota such as ''Panus'', and various Mortierellales species. It is the life-stage which survives in unfavourable c ...

racquet A racket, or racquet, is a sports implement used for striking a ball or shuttlecock in games such as squash, tennis, racquetball, badminton and padel. In the strictest sense a racket consists of a handled frame with an open hoop across which a ...

-shaped hyphae,

setae In biology, setae (singular seta ; from the Latin word for "bristle") are any of a number of different bristle- or hair-like structures on living organisms. Animal setae Protostomes Annelid setae are stiff bristles present on the body. Th ...

, or sexual reproduction. Arachnomyces bostrychodes ARevisionOfMalbranchea-LikeFungi Fig 3CDE

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q114068933, ncbi=2609445 Fungi described in 2021 Eurotiomycetes