Dothidotthia Höhn., Berichte der Deutschen Botanischen Gesellschaft 36: 312 (1918)
Background
Dothidotthia was assigned to Botryosphaeriaceae, because of its coelomycetous asexual morph, and characteristic peridium, pseudoparaphyses and asci (Barr 1989). Ramaley (2005) reported that Thyrostroma is the asexual morph of Dothidotthia based on the production of hyphomycetes in culture. Phillips et al. (2008), introduced a new family Dothidotthiaceae to accommodate Dothidotthia and considered Thyrostroma as the asexual morph of Dothidotthia. However, the links between the sexual and asexual morphs are not supported by molecular evidence. Recent molecular and morphology studies (Marin-Felix et al. 2017; Crous et al. 2019; Senwanna et al. 2019), based on a taxon sampling of current species indicates that Dothidotthia does not cluster near Thyrostroma. Thus, Dothidotthia is a distinct genus.
Classification – Ascomycota, Pezizomycotina, Dothideomycetes, Pleosporomycetidae, Pleosporales, Dothidotthiaceae
Type species – Dothidotthia symphoricarpi (Rehm) Höhn.
Distribution – in both temperate and tropical countries (Italy, Russia, Thailand, Ukraine and the USA)
Disease symptoms – species cause canker, dieback and leaf spot diseases on twig, branch, bark and leaf
Hosts – Pathogens of Acer negundo, Diapensia lapponica, Fendlera rupicola, Euonymus alatus, Robinia pseudoacacia, Verbena asparagoides (Barr 1989; Farr and Rossman 2019; Index Fungorum 2020).
Morphological based identification and diversity
In previous studies, the asexual morphs of Dothidotthia have been reported as Thyrostroma (Ramaley 2005), however, phylogenetic analyses indicated that Dothidotthia can be separated from Thyrostroma (Marin-Felix et al. 2017; Crous et al. 2016; Senwanna et al. 2019). Dothidotthia is characterized by fusiform to obclavate or obpyriform, 0–3-transversely septate conidia and a sexual morph with clavate, short pedicellate asci, ellipsoid, 1-septate ascospores (Fig. 1). The sexual morphs of Dothidotthia and Thyrostroma have similar morphological characteristics in shape and overlapping dimensions of asci and ascospores (Barr 1989; Ramaley 2005; Phillips et al. 2008; Hyde et al. 2013; Senwanna et al. 2019). However, Dothidotthia can be differentiated from Thyrostroma by peridium structure and conidial morphology and molecular phylogeny (Senwanna et al. 2019). Crous et al. (2019) introduced Neodothidotthia to accommodate N. negundinicola and Dothidotthia aspera was synonymized under N. negundinis based on analysis of LSU sequence data. However, Senwanna et al. (2019) showed that Neodothidotthia negundinicola and N. negundinis group with D. robiniae and D. symphoricarpi (type species). Furthermore, the conidial morphology of Neodothidotthia is similar to Dothidotthia symphoricarpi (Pseudotthia symphoricarpi) and D. robiniae (Phillips et al. 2008; Zhang et al. 2012; Crous et al. 2019; Senwanna et al. 2019). Therefore, Neodothidotthia had been treated as a synonym of Dothidotthia.