Unravelling the fungal darkness in a tropical cave: richness and the description of one new genus and six new species.

Caves are special environments that harbour an incredible diversity of life, including fungal species. Brazilian caves have been demonstrated to be biodiversity hotspots for known and unknown fungal species. We investigated the richness of culturable fungi in a tropical cave in Brazil by isolating these microorganisms from the sediment and air. The fungal abundance of colony-forming units (CFUs) was 3 178 in sediment and 526 in air. We used morphological features and phylogenetic analyses of actin (), calmodulin (), internal transcribed spacer regions and intervening 5.8S rRNA (ITS), large subunit (LSU) rDNA, RNA polymerase II second largest subunit (), translation elongation factor 1-alpha (), and β-tubulin () genes to identify these isolates. Forty-one species belonging to 17 genera of and two of were identified, and the genus was most commonly observed in the cave (13 taxa). Twenty-four species were found in sediment (16 exclusives) and 25 species were found in air (17 exclusives). In this study, we introduced a new genus (.) in the family and six new species (14 % of the total taxa identified) of fungal isolates obtained from sediment and air: ., ., ., ., ., and . In addition, we built a checklist of the fungal taxa reported from Brazilian caves. Our results highlight the contribution of Brazilian caves to the estimation of national and global fungal diversity. Alves VCS, Lira RA, Lima JMS, Barbosa RN, Bento DM, Barbier E, Bernard E, Souza-Motta CM, Bezerra JDP (2022). Unravelling the fungal darkness in a tropical cave: richness and the description of one new genus and six new species. : 139-167. doi: 10.3114/fuse.2022.10.06.