Antrodiella Explained

Antrodiella is a genus of fungi in the family Steccherinaceae of the order Polyporales.

Taxonomy

Antrodiella was circumscribed by mycologists Leif Ryvarden and I. Johansen in 1980. Of the seven original species it contained, only the type, Antrodiella semisupina, remains in the genus; most of the original species have since been transferred to Flaviporus.

Antrodiella was traditionally placed in the family Phanerochaetaceae until molecular studies were used to determine a more appropriate classification in the Steccherinaceae. The genus is a wastebasket taxon, containing "species that share common macroscopic and microscopic characteristics, but are not necessarily related".

Description

The fruitbodies of Antrodiella fungi are either crust-like to effused-reflexed (stretched out on the substrate but with edges curled up to form cap-like structures) in form. They have a waxy and soft fresh texture that becomes dense and hard, and often semitranslucent when dry. If it is present, the cap is narrow and light-coloured, smooth to scrupose (rough with very small hard points). The pore surface is light ochraceous to straw-coloured when dry, with small pores, and the tubes the same colour as the pore surface. The context is white to pale straw-coloured.

Antrodiella has a dimitic hyphal system, containing both generative and skeletal hyphae. The generative hyphae have clamps; the skeletal hyphae are typically narrow, hyaline, and thick-walled to solid. Although they are usually unbranched, in rare cases they have a few scattered branches. Cystidia can be absent or present from the hymenium. Antrodiella spores are small, rarely measuring above 5 μm in their longest dimension, and have a shape that is almost spherical, ellipsoid, or allantoid (sausage-shaped). They are thin-walled, hyaline, and non-amyloid.

Species

A 2008 estimate placed about 50 species in Antrodiella.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Antrodiella".

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