Bark beetle galleries as natural habitat for Scedosporium minutisporum in Iran

Bark beetles dig galleries in bark tissue and can transmit fungi in the forest. Their association with the members of the orders Microascales and Ophiostomatales are among the most exciting examples of symbioses in nature. In the present study, several synnematous fungal isolates were recovered from bark beetle galleries on declining woody hosts in Arasbaran and Toskestan forests in the northwestern and north zone of Iran. By the integration of morphological features with sequence data of ITS-rDNA region and TUB gene, the isolates were identified as Scedosporium minutisporum. A phylogeny inferred based on combined data set of the ITS-rDNA and TUB sequences clustered our isolate together with reference stain of S. minutisporum in the family Microascaceae. To the best of our knowledge S. minutisporum is new to the mycobiota of Iran. The pathogenic relevance of this species on bark beetles remains to be studied.