Morphological and molecular studies of selected Termitomyces species collected from 8 districts of Kanchanaburi province, Thailand

Abstract

Kanchanaburi forests are well known for high diversity of Termitomyces, an un-culturable and economic mushroom in Thailand, but their systematics are limited and unorganized. We, therefore, identified 28 Termitomyces isolates collected from 8 districts in Kanchanaburi province based on morphological characteristics and ITS1-5.8S-ITS2 rDNA sequences. Nine species were identified as T. albiceps, T. bulborhizus, T. cylindricus, T. heimii, T. microcarpus, T. radicatus, T. entolomoides, T. fuliginosus, and T. clypeatus. Analysis of ITS1-5.8S-ITS2 rDNA sequences of these Termitomyces species revealed that morphological characteristics of T. clypeatus represented the most extremely variations that had not been described in any identification references. The inferred Neighbor-Joining phylogram of ITS1-5.8S-ITS2 rDNA sequences showed that 13 selected Termitomyces isolates were monophyletic and diverged into 2 clades with no common characteristic that can be shared in each clade. In addition, the phylogenetic study demonstrated the monophyletic tree from pure Kanchanaburi Termitomyces isolates and mixture of Asia and African Termitomyces samples implied that both Asia and African Termitomyces species have evolved from the same ancestor.