Morphology and molecular phylogeny reveal two new species of Ganoderma (Basidiomycota, Polyporales) from China and Fiji

Ganoderma is a group of macrofungi with significant economic and medicinal values. In this study, two new species, Ganoderma ficuum and G. fijiense, are described based on morphological characteristics and molecular phylogenetic analyses. Ganoderma ficuum is characterized by imbricate and highly umbonate pilei, with relatively coarse radial sulcations, circular to angular pores (6–8 per mm), ellipsoid and distinctly truncated basidiospores, and from Guangdong, China.

Ganoderma fijiense is characterized by reddish brown to dark brown pilei, with usually obtuse margins, circular pores (5–7 per mm), narrowly ellipsoid basidiospores, with the endospore wall bearing densely spinulose ornamentation, and from Nadi, Fiji. In addition, multi-gene phylogenetic analyses showed that G. fijiense and G. ficuum formed two independent lineages with well supports based on the internal transcribed spacer (ITS), translation elongation factor 1 - α gene (TEF 1 - α), and the second largest subunit of RNA polymerase II (RPB 2) genes using Maximum Likelihood (ML) and Bayesian Inference (BI) methods.

The morphological descriptions and illustrations for two new species are also provided.