''Myxarium'' is a genus of fungi in the family

Hyaloriaceae The Hyaloriaceae are a family of fungi in the order Auriculariales. Species within the family have gelatinous basidiocarps (fruit bodies) that produce spores on septate basidia and, as such, were formerly referred to the " heterobasidiomyce ...

. Basidiocarps (fruit bodies) are gelatinous and effused or pustular. The genus is cosmopolitan. All species grow on dead wood or dead herbaceous stems.

Taxonomy

History

The genus was originally described by

Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Wallroth Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Wallroth (13 March 1792 in Breitenstein, Saxony-Anhalt – 22 March 1857 in Nordhausen, Thuringia, Nordhausen) was a German botanist. His name is abbreviated Wallr. as a taxon authority. He attended classes in medicine ...

in 1833 based on the visible white inclusions in the basidiocarps of the type species, '' Myxarium nucleatum'', which he interpreted as

spore In biology, a spore is a unit of sexual or asexual reproduction that may be adapted for dispersal and for survival, often for extended periods of time, in unfavourable conditions. Spores form part of the life cycles of many plants, algae, f ...

s (they are in fact crystals of

calcium oxalate Calcium oxalate (in archaic terminology, oxalate of lime) is a calcium salt of oxalic acid with the chemical formula . It forms hydrates , where ''n'' varies from 1 to 3. Anhydrous and all hydrated forms are colorless or white. The monohydrate ...

). The genus was synonymized with '' Exidia'' by subsequent authors, until revived by Dutch mycologist M.A. Donk in 1966. The revised concept of ''Myxarium'' emphasized the microscopic presence of septate basidia with enucleate stalk cells ("myxarioid" basidia), a feature absent in ''Exidia''. Additional species were added to the genus on this basis.

Current status

Molecular A molecule is a group of two or more atoms held together by attractive forces known as chemical bonds; depending on context, the term may or may not include ions which satisfy this criterion. In quantum physics, organic chemistry, and bioche ...

research, based on cladistic analysis of DNA sequences, indicates that ''Myxarium'' is distinct from ''Exidia'' and forms a natural (

monophyletic In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic gro ...

) group of species related to the type. Not all fungi with "myxarioid" basidia belong to the genus, however, and at least one species (''M. fugacissimum'') lacks such basidia.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q10592904 Auriculariales Agaricomycetes genera