CULTURAL AND TAXONOMIC STUDIES ON CERTAIN FUSARIA: II. THE TAXONOMIC PROBLEM IN FUSARIUM WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO SECTION ELEGANS

Abstract

The conclusions that the "normal culture" stage described by certain specialists in Fusarium taxonomy represents the dominance of the original or wild type by a mutant, and that the "sporodochia" that appear in laboratory cultures of Fusarium are actually patch mutants, are shown to have an important bearing on the taxonomy of the genus. The indication is that the specific descriptions of many Fusaria are based to a large extent on cultural variants of the types found in nature. To avoid confusion, care should be taken to base spp. descriptions on the characters of the wild types. While morphological separation of wild types may be found extremely difficult within certain groups of Fusarium owing to the close similarity of the components, the effort should not be abandoned because of the wide range of variation displayed by these organisms in artificial culture. Spp. should be merged only when morphological separation is extremely difficult or where variability in nature makes consistent diagnosis uncertain.