Epifoliar fungi is a group of poorly studied fungal symbionts that co-inhabit the surface of living plants. Meliolaceae is the largest group of epifoliar fungi and has been considered as obligate parasites. We investigated the taxonomy of Meliolaceae and the coevolutionary events with their host plants using time-calibrated cophylogeny based on LSU, SSU, and ITS sequence data obtained from 17 different fungal taxa and rbcL, ITS, and trnH-psbA sequence data from their corresponding hosts. Nine new fungal species are introduced in this paper and Appendiculella is synonymised under Asteridiella. The dominant coevolutionary event during the Cretaceous and Cenozoic is cospeciation and host shift respectively. We hypothesize that the evolutionary history of epifoliar fungi can be divided into three major periods: origins of families, formations of genera followed by diversification of species. The rise of angiosperms prompted the evolution of modern epifoliar fungi and the diversification of orders of Angiospermae fostered the formation of epifoliar fungal genera. Phylogenetically, epifoliar fungal genera can be delimited according to their coevolutionary patterns and divergent periods.
Congratulations, XY Zeng and co-authors!
