Safagamyces Bakhit & Abdel-Wahab gen. nov.

MycoBank No.: MB 844732.

Etymology:— Named after Safaga city, where the holotype was collected.

Asexual morph: Hyphae septate, rarely branched, smooth, hyaline to light-brown, superficial and immersed. Conidiophores micronematous, smooth, hyaline, simple, cylindrical, present or obsolete. Conidiogenesis is holoblastic with sympodial conidial proliferation. Conidia straight or slightly curved, branched, smooth, variable in shape, septate, strongly constricted at the septa, cells increase in size and pigmentation from the base to the apex; apical cells globose to subglobose, brown to dark-brown, thick walled, smooth; basal cells, cylindrical to clavate, hyaline. Sexual morph: Undetermined.

Type species:— Safagamyces marinus Bakhit & Abdel-Wahab

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Notes:— Molecular phylogenetic analyses of SSU and LSU rDNA placed Safagamyces as a basal branch to a node that contains the three asexual marine genera: Cirrenalia, Cucurbitinus and Pseudolignincola. However, its molecular position along with its morphology warrant a generic separation. Morphologically, Safagamyces shares common characters with Cirrenalia and Cucurbitinus in having conidial cells constricted at the septa and increasing in size and pigmentation from the base to the apex (Meyers & Moore 1960, Liu et al. 2020). However, Safagamyces differs from the two genera by having branched conidia with sympodial conidial proliferation. Pseudolignincola is different from Safagamyces in having unicellular, dark-brown conidia and its teleomorphic stage have clavate asci with truncate, thickened apex, a pore and plasmalemma retraction and cylindrical ascospores without appendages (Jones et al. 2006).