Wickerhamomyces sylviae f.a., sp. nov., an ascomycetous yeast species isolated from migratory birds

Nicola Francesca, Cláudia Carvalho, Pedro Miguel Almeida, Ciro Sannino, Luca Settanni, José Paulo Sampaio, Giancarlo Moschetti

¹Department of Agricultural and Forest Science, Università degli Studi di Palermo, Viale delle Scienze 4, 90128 Palermo, Italy

²Centro de Recursos Microbiológicos, Departamento de Ciências da Vida, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2829-516 Caparica, Portugal

Correspondence
Giancarlo Moschetti giancarlo.moschetti{at}unipa.it

International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology 2013; 63(Pt 12):4824–4830 · https://doi.org/10.1099/ijs.0.056382-0

Abstract

In the present work, we investigated the phylogenetic position and phenotypic characteristics of eight yeast isolates collected from migratory birds on the island of Ustica, Italy. A phylogenetic analysis based on the D1/D2 region of the large-subunit rRNA gene showed that all isolates clustered as a single separate lineage within the Wickerhamomyces clade. They exhibited distinct morphological and physiological characteristics and were clearly separated from their closest relatives, Wickerhamomyces lynferdii, Wickerhamomyces anomalus and Wickerhamomyces subpelliculosus, in blastn searches. On the basis of the isolation source, physiological features and molecular strain typing carried out with randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD)-PCR and minisatellite-primed (MSP)-PCR analysis, the isolates were identified as strains of the same species. The name Wickerhamomyces sylviae f.a., sp. nov. is proposed to accommodate these novel strains; the type strain is U88A2^T ( = PYCC 6345^T = CBS 12888^T). The MycoBank number is MB 804762.