(Fungi, Ascomycota) associated with ladybirds (Coleoptera, Coccinellidae): Rethinking host specificity.

Laboulbeniales (Ascomycota, Laboulbeniomycetes) are biotrophic microfungi always attached to the exoskeleton of their arthropod hosts. They do not form hyphae or a mycelium; instead, they undergo determinate growth, developing from a two-celled ascospore to form a multicellular thallus. has been reported on over 30 species of ladybirds (Coleoptera, Coccinellidae); in reality, it represents a complex of species, presumably segregated by host genus association. In this study, we report on thalli on from the Canary Islands and compare them with the described on sp. from Trinidad. We generated the sequences of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region, the large subunit (LSU) nuclear ribosomal RNA gene, and the minichromosome maintenance complex component 7 () protein-coding gene. Our phylogenetic reconstruction of based on a concatenated ITS-LSU- dataset revealed sp. ex as a member of the species complex distinct from (s.s.). It also revealed that the sp. ex from Algeria is different from s.s., which is associated with from the USA. This suggests that the species of are not solely segregated by host association, but that there is also a biogeographical component involved. Based on these data, we refrained from referring our material from to . Finally, we discuss the usefulness of as a useful marker for species delimitation in .