A fungal plant pathogen discovered in the Devonian Rhynie Chert

Christine Strullu-Derrien (), Tomasz Goral, Alan R. T. Spencer, Paul Kenrick, M. Catherine Aime, Ester Gaya and David L. Hawksworth
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Christine Strullu-Derrien: The Natural History Museum
Tomasz Goral: The Natural History Museum
Alan R. T. Spencer: The Natural History Museum
Paul Kenrick: The Natural History Museum
M. Catherine Aime: Purdue University
Ester Gaya: Royal Botanic Gardens
David L. Hawksworth: The Natural History Museum

Nature Communications, 2023, vol. 14, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Fungi are integral to well-functioning ecosystems, and their broader impact on Earth systems is widely acknowledged. Fossil evidence from the Rhynie Chert (Scotland, UK) shows that Fungi were already diverse in terrestrial ecosystems over 407-million-years-ago, yet evidence for the occurrence of Dikarya (the subkingdom of Fungi that includes the phyla Ascomycota and Basidiomycota) in this site is scant. Here we describe a particularly well-preserved asexual fungus from the Rhynie Chert which we examined using brightfield and confocal microscopy. We document Potteromyces asteroxylicola gen. et sp. nov. that we attribute to Ascomycota incertae sedis (Dikarya). The fungus forms a stroma-like structure with conidiophores arising in tufts outside the cuticle on aerial axes and leaf-like appendages of the lycopsid plant Asteroxylon mackiei. It causes a reaction in the plant that gives rise to dome-shaped surface projections. This suite of features in the fungus together with the plant reaction tissues provides evidence of it being a plant pathogenic fungus. The fungus evidently belongs to an extinct lineage of ascomycetes that could serve as a minimum node age calibration point for the Ascomycota as a whole, or even the Dikarya crown group, along with some other Ascomycota previously documented in the Rhynie Chert.

Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-43276-1

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