Hughes (1976) defined the term sooty moulds as follows: Sooty moulds are `saprophytic fungi, usually with dark-coloured hyphae, which produce brown to black colonies superficially on living plants,´ and they are `often associated with scale insects and other producer of honeydew but they can also occur without them.´ The term sooty moulds is here taken in this sense. The sooty moulds are usually treated as a heterogenous assemblage of seven ascomycetous families and their anamorphs of which only one family the Triposporiopsidaceae Hughes (1976) is unitunicate, and other six families, i.e., the Chaetothyriaceae Hansford (1946), the Antennulariaceae Woronichin (1925), the Seuratiaceae Vuillemin (1905), the Capnodiaceae (Sacc.) Ho¨hnel (1910), the Metacapnodiaceae Hughes et Corlett in Hughes (1972), and the Euantennariaceae Hughes et Corlett in Hughes (1972), are all bitunicate (sensu Hughes, l.c.).
A brief report will be presented on an analysis of some hyphomycetous sooty moulds in the southern hemisphere, particularly of those which are included in anamorphic genera of the Euantennariaceae and the Metacapnodiaceae and also on their geographical distribution patterns.
Some years ago, I encountered to look at a hyphomycetous sooty mould collected by Br. Yosio Kobayasi, National Science Museum, Tokyo. The collection was made on Rhododendron leaves and twigs, along Lake Aunde (alt. ca. 3, 530m), Mt. Wilhelm, Papua New Guinea in January 1970. It bears both Antennatula phragmoconidia and Hormisciomyces phialoconidia but with no teleomorphic state. As a result of my careful examination, the fungus was identified as Antennatula shawiae described recently, also from West Irian and Papua New Guinea, by Hughes (1973).
I had other opportunity in twice of collecting and looking at sooty moulds in their habitats, i.e., particularly the Nothofagus forests, in the southern hemisphere: One field work was done in Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand in November-December 1977, and another in Chile (South America) in April 1979. The identity of some hyphomycetous sooty moulds gathered in these occasions will also be represented, although most of my study concerning the microfungi in the southern hemisphere are now in progress.
The greatest diversity of both euantennariaceous and metacapnodiaceous species is in New Zealand, and the geographical distribution of both families overlaps almost completely (Pirozynski and Weresub, 1979). It is of interest, also, that the geographical distribution of both sooty-mould families and the Nothofagus forests as their habitats nearly overlaps in the southern hemisphere, as a tightly overlapping pattern of distribution in Cyttaria (Discomycetes) and its specific host plant Nothofagus is already wellknown there. On the other hand, most sootymould taya in the northern hemisphere are clearly vicariant (Pirozynski and Weresub, l.c.) and occur mainly on ericaceous plants and Juniperus.
|