Description: The Global Consortium for the Classification of Fungi and fungus-like taxa is an international initiative of more than 550 mycologists to develop an electronic structure for the classification of these organisms. The members of the Consortium originate from 55 countries/regions worldwide, from a wide range of disciplines, and include senior, mid-career and early-career mycologists and plant pathologists. The Consortium will publish a biannual update of the Outline of Fungi and funguslike taxa, to act as an international scheme for other scientists. Notes on all newly published taxa at or above the level of species will be prepared and published online on the Outline of Fungi website (https://www.outlineoffungi.org/), and these will be finally published in the biannual edition of the Outline of Fungi and fungus-like taxa. Comments on recent important taxonomic opinions on controversial topics will be included in the biannual outline. For example, ‘to promote a more stable taxonomy in Fusarium given the divergences over its generic delimitation’, or ‘are there too many genera in the Boletales?’ and even more importantly, ‘what should be done with the tremendously diverse ‘dark fungal taxa?’ There are undeniable differences in mycologists’ perceptions and opinions regarding species classification as well as the establishment of new species. Given the pluralistic nature of fungal taxonomy and its implications for species concepts and the nature of species, this consortium aims to provide a platform to better refine and stabilise fungal classification, taking into consideration views from different parties. In the future, a confidential voting system will be set up to gauge the opinions of all mycologists in the Consortium on important topics. The results of such surveys will be presented to the International Commission on the Taxonomy of Fungi (ICTF) and the Nomenclature Committee for Fungi (NCF) with opinions and percentages of votes for and against. Criticisms based on scientific evidence with regards to nomenclature, classifications, and taxonomic concepts will be welcomed, and any recommendations on specific taxonomic issues will also be encouraged; however, we will encourage professionally and ethically responsible criticisms of others’ work. This biannual ongoing project will provide an outlet for advances in various topics of fungal classification, nomenclature, and taxonomic concepts and lead to a community-agreed classification scheme for the fungi and fungus-like taxa. Interested parties should contact the lead author if they would like to be involved in future outlines.

Description: New data on 52 non-indigenous mollusks in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea is reported. Fossarus sp. (aff. aptus sensu Blatterer 2019), Coriophora lessepsiana Albano, Bakker & Sabelli, sp. nov., Cerithiopsis sp. aff. pulvis, Joculator problematicus Albano & Steger, sp. nov., Cerithiopsis sp., Elachisina sp., Iravadia aff. elongata, Vitrinella aff. Vitrinella sp. 1 (sensu Blatterer 2019), Melanella orientalis, Parvioris aff. dilecta, Odostomia cf. dalli, Oscilla virginiae, Parthenina cossmanni, Parthenina typica, Pyrgulina craticulata, Turbonilla funiculata, Cylichna collyra, Musculus coenobitus, Musculus aff. viridulus, Chavania erythraea, Scintilla cf. violescens, Iacra seychellarum and Corbula erythraeensis are new records for the Mediterranean. An unidentified gastropod, Skeneidae indet., Triphora sp., Hypermastus sp., Sticteulima sp., Vitreolina cf. philippi, Odostomia (s.l.) sp. 1, Henrya (?) sp., and Semelidae sp. are further potential new non-indigenous species although their status should be confirmed upon final taxonomic assessment. Additionally, the status of Dikoleps micalii, Hemiliostraca clandestina comb. nov. and H. athenamariae comb. nov. is changed to non-indigenous, range extensions for nine species and the occurrence of living individuals for species previously recorded from empty shells only are reported. Opimaphora blattereri Albano, Bakker & Sabelli, sp. nov. is described from the Red Sea for comparison with the morphologically similar C. lessepsiana Albano, Bakker & Sabelli, sp. nov. The taxonomic part is followed by a discussion on how intensive fieldwork and cooperation among institutions and individuals enabled such a massive report, and how the poor taxonomic knowledge of the Indo-Pacific fauna hampers non-indigenous species detection and identification. Finally, the hypothesis that the simultaneous analysis of quantitative benthic death assemblages can support the assignment of non-indigenous status to taxonomically undetermined species is discussed.

Description: During an oomycete survey in December 2015, 10 previously unknown Halophytophthora taxa were isolated from marine and brackish water of tidal ponds and channels in saltmarshes, lagoon ecosystems and river estuaries at seven sites along the Algarve coast in the South of Portugal. Phylogenetic analyses of LSU and ITS datasets, comprising all described Halophytophthora species, the 10 new Halophytophthora taxa and all relevant and distinctive sequences available from GenBank, provided an updated phylogeny of the genus Halophytophthora s.str. showing for the first time a structure of 10 clades designated as Clades 1–10. Nine of the 10 new Halophytophthora taxa resided in Clade 6 together with H. polymorphica and H. vesicula. Based on differences in morphology and temperature-growth relations and a multigene (LSU, ITS, Btub, hsp90, rpl10, tigA, cox1, nadh1, rps10) phylogeny, eight new Halophytophthora taxa from Portugal are described here as H. brevisporangia, H. celeris, H. frigida, H. lateralis, H. lusitanica, H. macrosporangia, H. sinuata and H. thermoambigua. Three species, H. frigida, H. macrosporangia and H. sinuata, have a homothallic breeding system while the remaining five species are sterile. Pathogenicity and litter decomposition tests are underway to clarify their pathological and ecological role in the marine and brackish-water ecosystems. More oomycete surveys in yet undersurveyed regions of the world and population genetic or phylogenomic analyses of global populations are needed to clarify the origin of the new Halophytophthora species.

Description: Several plant pathogenic Parastagonospora species have been identified infecting wheat and other cereals over the past 50 years. As new lineages were discovered, naming conventions grew unwieldy and the relationships with previously recognized species remained unclear. We used genome sequencing to clarify relationships among these species and provided new names for most of these species. Six of the nine described Parastagonospora species were recovered from wheat, with five of these species coming from Iran. Genome sequences revealed that three strains thought to be hybrids between P. nodorum and P. pseudonodorum were not actually hybrids, but rather represented rare gene introgressions between those species. Our data are consistent with the hypothesis that P. nodorum originated as a pathogen of wild grasses in the Fertile Crescent, then emerged as a wheat pathogen via host-tracking during the domestication of wheat in the same region. The discovery of a diverse array of Parastagonospora species infecting wheat in Iran suggests that new wheat pathogens could emerge from this region in the future.

Description: The Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo) is a pan-European Research \nInfrastructure (RI) initiative. DiSSCo aims to bring together natural science collections from \n175 museums, botanical gardens, universities and research institutes across 23 countries \nin a distributed infrastructure that makes these collections physically and digitally open and \naccessible for all forms of research and innovation. DiSSCo RI entered the ESFRI \nroadmap in 2018 and successfully concluded its Preparatory Phase in early 2023. The RI \nis now transitioning towards the constitution of its legal entity (an ERIC) and the start of its \nscaled-up construction (implementation) programme. This publication is an abridged \nversion of the successful grant proposal for the DiSSCo Transition Project which has the \ngoal of ensuring the seamless transition of the DiSSCo RI from its Preparatory Phase to \nthe Construction Phase (expected to start in 2025). In this transition period, the Project will \naddress five objectives building on the outcomes of the Preparatory Phase project: \n1) Advance the DiSSCo ERIC process and complete its policy framework, ensuring the \nsmooth early-phase Implementation of DISSCo; \n2) Engage & support DiSSCo National Nodes to strengthen national commitments; \n3) Advance the development of core e-services to avoid the accumulation of technical debt \nbefore the start of the Implementation Phase; \n4) Continue international collaboration on standards & best practices needed for the \nDiSSCo service provision; and \n5) Continue supporting DiSSCo RI interim governance bodies and transition them to the \nDiSSCo ERIC formal governance. \nThe Project\xe2\x80\x99s impact will be measured against the increase in the RI\'s overall \nImplementation Readiness Level (IRL). More specifically, we will monitor its impact towards \nreaching the required level of maturity in four of the five dimensions of the IRL that can \nbenefit from further developments. These include the organisational, financial, \ntechnological and data readiness levels.

Description: DiSSCo, the Distributed System of Scientific Collections, is a pan-European Research \nInfrastructure (RI) mobilising, unifying bio- and geo-diversity information connected to the \nspecimens held in natural science collections and delivering it to scientific communities and \nbeyond. Bringing together 120 institutions across 21 countries and combining earlier \ninvestments in data interoperability practices with technological advancements in \ndigitisation, cloud services and semantic linking, DiSSCo makes the data from natural \nscience collections available as one virtual data cloud, connected with data emerging from \nnew techniques and not already linked to specimens. These new data include DNA \nbarcodes, whole genome sequences, proteomics and metabolomics data, chemical data, \ntrait data, and imaging data (Computer-assisted Tomography (CT), Synchrotron, etc.), to name but a few; and will lead to a wide range of end-user services that begins with finding, \naccessing, using and improving data. DiSSCo will deliver the diagnostic information \nrequired for novel approaches and new services that will transform the landscape of what \nis possible in ways that are hard to imagine today. \nWith approximately 1.5 billion objects to be digitised, bringing natural science collections to \nthe information age is expected to result in many tens of petabytes of new data over the \nnext decades, used on average by 5,000 \xe2\x80\x93 15,000 unique users every day. This requires \nnew skills, clear policies and robust procedures and new technologies to create, work with \nand manage large digital datasets over their entire research data lifecycle, including their \nlong-term storage and preservation and open access. Such processes and procedures \nmust match and be derived from the latest thinking in open science and data management, \nrealising the core principles of \'findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable\' (FAIR). \nSynthesised from results of the ICEDIG project ("Innovation and Consolidation for Large \nScale Digitisation of Natural Heritage", EU Horizon 2020 grant agreement No. 777483) the \nDiSSCo Conceptual Design Blueprint covers the organisational arrangements, processes \nand practices, the architecture, tools and technologies, culture, skills and capacity building \nand governance and business model proposals for constructing the digitisation \ninfrastructure of DiSSCo. In this context, the digitisation infrastructure of DiSSCo must be \ninterpreted as that infrastructure (machinery, processing, procedures, personnel, \norganisation) offering Europe-wide capabilities for mass digitisation and digitisation-ondemand, \nand for the subsequent management (i.e., curation, publication, processing) and \nuse of the resulting data. The blueprint constitutes the essential background needed to \ncontinue work to raise the overall maturity of the DiSSCo Programme across multiple \ndimensions (organisational, technical, scientific, data, financial) to achieve readiness to \nbegin construction. \nToday, collection digitisation efforts have reached most collection-holding institutions \nacross Europe. Much of the leadership and many of the people involved in digitisation and \nworking with digital collections wish to take steps forward and expand the efforts to benefit \nfurther from the already noticeable positive effects. The collective results of examining \ntechnical, financial, policy and governance aspects show the way forward to operating a \nlarge distributed initiative i.e., the Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo) for \nnatural science collections across Europe. Ample examples, opportunities and need for \ninnovation and consolidation for large scale digitisation of natural heritage have been \ndescribed. The blueprint makes one hundred and four (104) recommendations to be \nconsidered by other elements of the DiSSCo Programme of linked projects (i.e., \nSYNTHESYS+, COST MOBILISE, DiSSCo Prepare, and others to follow) and the DiSSCo \nProgramme leadership as the journey towards organisational, technical, scientific, data and \nfinancial readiness continues. \nNevertheless, significant obstacles must be overcome as a matter of priority if DiSSCo is to \nmove beyond its Design and Preparatory Phases during 2024. Specifically, these include: \nOrganisational: \n\xe2\x80\xa2 Strengthen common purpose by adopting a common framework for policy \nharmonisation and capacity enhancement across broad areas, especially in respect \nof digitisation strategy and prioritisation, digitisation processes and techniques, data \nand digital media publication and open access, protection of and access to \nsensitive data, and administration of access and benefit sharing. \n\xe2\x80\xa2 Pursue the joint ventures and other relationships necessary to the successful \ndelivery of the DiSSCo mission, especially ventures with GBIF and other \ninternational and regional digitisation and data aggregation organisations, in the \ncontext of infrastructure policy frameworks, such as EOSC. Proceed with the \nexplicit aim of avoiding divergences of approach in global natural science \ncollections data management and research. \nTechnical: \n\xe2\x80\xa2 Adopt and enhance the DiSSCo Digital Specimen Architecture and, specifically as \na matter of urgency, establish the persistent identifier scheme to be used by \nDiSSCo and (ideally) other comparable regional initiatives. \n\xe2\x80\xa2 Establish (software) engineering development and (infrastructure) operations team \nand direction essential to the delivery of services and functionalities expected from \nDiSSCo such that earnest engineering can lead to an early start of DiSSCo \noperations. \nScientific: \n\xe2\x80\xa2 Establish a common digital research agenda leveraging Digital (extended) \nSpecimens as anchoring points for all specimen-associated and -derived \ninformation, demonstrating to research institutions and policy/decision-makers the \nnew possibilities, opportunities and value of participating in the DiSSCo research \ninfrastructure. \nData: \n\xe2\x80\xa2 Adopt the FAIR Digital Object Framework and the International Image \nInteroperability Framework as the low entropy means to achieving uniform access \nto rich data (image and non-image) that is findable, accessible, interoperable and \nreusable (FAIR). \n\xe2\x80\xa2 Develop and promote best practice approaches towards achieving the best \ndigitisation results in terms of quality (best, according to agreed minimum \ninformation and other specifications), time (highest throughput, fast), and cost \n(lowest, minimal per specimen). \nFinancial \n\xe2\x80\xa2 Broaden attractiveness (i.e., improve bankability) of DiSSCo as an infrastructure to \ninvest in. \n\xe2\x80\xa2 Plan for finding ways to bridge the funding gap to avoid disruptions in the critical \nfunding path that risks interrupting core operations; especially when the gap opens \nbetween the end of preparations and beginning of implementation due to unsolved \npolitical difficulties. \nStrategically, it is vital to balance the multiple factors addressed by the blueprint against \none another to achieve the desired goals of the DiSSCo programme. Decisions cannot be \ntaken on one aspect alone without considering other aspects, and here the various \ngovernance structures of DiSSCo (General Assembly, advisory boards, and stakeholder \nforums) play a critical role over the coming years.

Description: The current list of Chinese quarantine pests includes 130 fungal species. However, recent changes in the taxonomy of fungi following the one fungus = one name initiative and the implementation of DNA phylogeny in taxonomic revisions, resulted in many changes of these species names, necessitating an update of the current list. In addition, many quarantine fungi lack modern morphological descriptions and authentic DNA sequences, posing significant challenges for the development of diagnostic protocols. The aim of the present study was to review the taxonomy and names of the 33 Chinese quarantine fungi in Dothideomycetes, and provide reliable DNA barcodes to facilitate rapid identification. Of these, 23 names were updated according to the single name nomenclature system, including one new combination, namely Cophinforma tumefaciens comb. nov. (syn. Sphaeropsis tumefaciens). On the basis of phylogenetic analyses and morphological comparisons, a new genus Xenosphaeropsis is introduced to accommodate the monotypic species Xenosphaeropsis pyriputrescens comb. nov. (syn. Sphaeropsis pyriputrescens), the causal agent of a post-harvest disease of pears. Furthermore, four lectotypes (Ascochyta petroselini, Mycosphaerella ligulicola, Physalospora laricina, Sphaeria lingam), three epitypes (Ascochyta petroselini, Phoma lycopersici, Sphaeria lingam), and two neotypes (Ascochyta pinodella, Deuterophoma tracheiphila) are designated to stabilise the use of these names. A further four reference strains are introduced for Cophinforma tumefaciens, Helminthosporium solani, Mycocentro spora acerina, and Septoria linicola. In addition, to assist future studies on these important pathogens, we sequenced and assembled whole genomes for 17 species, including Alternaria triticina, Boeremia foveata, B. lycopersici, Cladosporium cucumerinum, Didymella glomerata, Didymella pinodella, Diplodia mutila, Helminthosporium solani, Mycocentrospora acerina, Neofusicoccum laricinum, Parastagonospora pseudonodorum, Plenodomus libanotidis, Plenodomus lingam, Plenodomus tracheiphilus, Septoria petroselini, Stagonosporopsis chrysanthemi, and Xenosphaeropsis pyriputrescens.

Description: Rosa (Rosaceae) is an important ornamental and medicinal plant genus worldwide, with several species being cultivated in China. Members of Sporocadaceae (pestalotioid fungi) are globally distributed and include endophytes, saprobes but also plant pathogens, infecting a broad range of host plants on which they can cause important plant diseases. Although several Sporocadaceae species were recorded to inhabit Rosa spp., the taxa occurring on Rosa remain largely unresolved. In this study, a total of 295 diseased samples were collected from branches, fruits, leaves and spines of eight Rosa species (R. chinensis, R. helenae, R. laevigata, R. multiflora, R. omeiensis, R. rugosa, R. spinosissima and R. xanthina) in Gansu, Henan, Hunan, Qinghai, Shaanxi Provinces and the Ningxia Autonomous Region of China. Subsequently 126 strains were obtained and identified based on comparisons of DNA sequence data. Based on these results 15 species residing in six genera of Sporocadaceae were delineated, including four known species (Pestalotiopsis chamaeropis, Pes. rhodomyrtus, Sporocadus sorbi and Spo. trimorphus) and 11 new species described here as Monochaetia rosarum, Neopestalotiopsis concentrica, N. subepidermalis, Pestalotiopsis tumida, Seimatosporium centrale, Seim. gracile, Seim. nonappendiculatum, Seim. parvum, Seiridium rosae, Sporocadus brevis, and Spo. spiniger. This study also represents the first report of Pes. chamaeropis, Pes. rhodomyrtus and Spo. sorbi on Rosa. The overall data revealed that Pestalotiopsis was the most prevalent genus, followed by Seimatosporium, while Pes. chamaeropis and Pes. rhodomyrtus were the two most prevalent species. Analysis of Sporocadaceae abundance on Rosa species and plant organs revealed that spines of R. chinensis had the highest species diversity.