Oral Paper

         Systematics

Delving into the cryptic diversity of a holomycotroph – progress with dissecting Hypopitys monotropa (Ericaceae) across North America

Presenting Author
John Freudenstein
Description
Plants with reduced morphology, such as holomycotrophs, are a particular challenge for species circumscription because of the paucity of phenotypic features.  Hypopitys monotropa Crantz (formerly Monotropa hypopitys L.) is a case in point.  Currently most often recognized as a single species, its distribution is vast, from central America north across North American and across Eurasia.  Although segregates have at times been proposed, most in both the New and Old Worlds have been disregarded.  Because of the structural reduction, a case such as this is a particularly important one for application of molecular data. Applying an integrative approach that requires evidence of phenotypic shifts coincident with lineage resolution is challenging because of structural reduction and because color, which is variable in the species, is largely lost in dried specimens.  Another potentially relevant source of variation is the identity of the host fungus that Hypopitys parasitizes, yielding an extended phenotypic character.  We have sequenced over 100 accessions from across the species’ range in North America for a nuclear ITS-26S 1500 bp segment.  Likelihood analysis resolves six well-supported groups, which are also supported by a broader genomic sampling of SNPs for a subset of these accessions.  The groups have distinct geographic ranges, phenology and, to the extent of our fungal sampling thus far, may be using different groups of Tricholoma as hosts.  Some of these groups are also morphologically distinct, such as a red-flowered group from the southwestern US and Mexico, and the previously-named H. lanuginosa (Michx.) Raf., a late-flowering group from the eastern US.  We propose that these should be recognized as distinct species.  Other groups remain challenging to diagnose morphologically, and thus from dried specimens, but citizen-science biodiversity reporting sites such as iNaturalist provide a very useful source of information on color, and to some extent structure, of fresh plants, information rapidly lost in the drying process.