South American morels in the Elata group: mitosporic states, distributions, and commentary

The occurrence and distribution of morels in Nothofagaceae forests of South America are addressed based on our field studies in Southern Chile and Argentina. Both ascomata and mitosporic colonies were collected. In addition, ascomata were procured from commercial harvesters. A four-gene (ITS, RPB1 , RPB2 , TEF1-α ) and ITS phylogeny assigned these Morchella ascomatal and mitosporic collections to four Elata clade lineages, M. andinensis , M. aysenina , M. eximia , and M. tridentina, which were each well supported by ML and Bayesian analyses . The placement of our collections of the two lineages unique to South America, M. andinensis (previously cited as Mel-37) and M. aysenina , expands their known distribution in South America. Most of the field-collected mitosporic colonies in our study belong to the M. eximia “fire adapted lineage.” This is the first report of M. eximia , under this name, in Chile. Since the mitosporic colonies are frequent in the field, these collections help to expand the geographical range of currently described species.