The mycoparasite Syncephalis (Zoopagomycota) in Brazil: two new species and two new occurrences from the Amazon Forest

Leslie Waren Silva de Freitas, Suzana Brito Gomes da Silva, Roger Fagner Ribeiro Melo, Bruno Tomio Goto, Maria Alice Barbosa dos Santos, Maria Carolina da Rosa Pinto & André Luíz Cabral Monteiro de Azevedo Santiago

Sydowia 78: 75-93

Published online on May 26th, 2025

The Amazon Forest is one of the most diverse biomes in the world, and several new records and species of fungi have been discovered in this Forest. Limited research on Amazonian fungi usually focuses on fungi from higher groups, such as basidiomycetes, whereas zygosporic fungi have been neglected. During a study on mucoralean diversity in the Brazilian Amazon soil, we came across four Syncephalis species parasitizing Mucorales hosts. After a meticulous morphological analysis, two new species of Syncephalis, S. bifurcata sp. nov. and S. amazonensis sp. nov., and two new records for the Neotropics, S. rapacea and S. pseudoplumigaleata, are described here. Drawings and photographs of those species are provided, and we also provide a table with all Syncephalis species, including hosts and countries data.

Keywords: Amazon, soil fungi, taxonomy, Zoopagales, 2 new taxa

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