**8. Phylogeny of bamboo ascomycetes**

**6. Bamboo ascomycetes: host distribution**

**7. Bamboo ascomycetes: tissue specificity**

on species numbers [3].

176 Bamboo - Current and Future Prospects

**Figure 12** showcases a picture of higher diversity of ascomycetes on the substrate genus *Bambusa*. More than 260 ascomycetous species are so far recorded from host *Bambusa*. This may be due to that the authors artificially treated mostly bamboo host names as *Bambusa* spp. The next bamboo genus with a higher fungal diversity is *Phyllostachys* with around 180 fungal species. *Phyllostachys* is one of the most common genera of bamboo. This may be the possible reason why it yielded a higher number of fungal taxa. There are 105 ascomycetous species occurring on *Sasa*, 73 on *Arundinaria*, 60 on *Chusquea,* and 56 on *Pleioblastus*. Such high species diversity at the subfamily level (*Bambusoideae*) undoubtedly has a significant impact

It is reported that most fungi grow on bamboo culms (514 fungal species) and leaves and only few recorded species from shoots, roots, or inflorescences [3]. An update of bamboo tissue types with their fungal species number is shown in **Figure 13** and according to which 665 fungal species have been collected from bamboo culms and 216 species were recorded from leaves, followed by sheaths (19 species) and branches (14 species). It is unknown whether fungi are tissue specific or are simply recurrent on certain bamboo tissues [3]. Most bamboo pathogens affect leaves, although a large number of ascomycetes (e.g., *Roussoella* spp. and

*Astrosphaeriella* spp.) have been reported on decaying culms or branches.

**Figure 12.** Bamboo genera with more than 10 recorded ascomycetous species until 2017.

Phylogenetic analysis has been widely used to study the evolution and relationships among fungal individuals or groups. It is the modern method to clarify fungal species or fungal higher level placements (viz. genus, family, order, etc.). Initially, the studies of bamboo ascomycetes were carried out only based on the morphologic examinations. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Japanese mycologists made the first contributed acknowledge on bamboo ascomycetes identifications and introduced a new fungal family to accommodate five new genera founded on bamboo [52]. To evaluate the validity of fungal taxa and clarify their phylogenetic relationships, the combined sequences of data with multi-genes (LSU (large subunit rDNA), SSU (small subunit rDNA), TEF (translation elongation factor 1-α gene region), and beta-tubulin) were firstly used to make the phylogenetic trees for bamboo-associated ascomycetes in [16]. Following, more new species, genera, and several new families were established by Thai and Chinese researchers based on morphologyphylogeny and the linking of sexual-asexual morphs [45, 55]. In their studies, ITS (internal transcribed spacers) and beta-tubulin genes were usually used to indentify fungal species like species in *Arthrinium* and *Myrothecium* [16, 51] and LSU, SSU, TEF, and RPB2 (RNA polymerase II second largest subunit) were used to clarify the relationships among genera, families, and orders [16, 52]. The evolution study of bamboo ascomycetes has not been carried out yet, probably due to most old species having no molecular data. More than 800 ascomycetous species with 240 hyphomycetous taxa and 110 coelomycetous taxa are so far recorded on bamboo; however, only less than 180 species have available sequences. Fresh specimens are required to recollect, and the existing species are waiting for reexamination or epitypification.
