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Check List 11(4): 1716, 21 August 2015 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15560/11.4.1716
ISSN 1809-127X © 2015 Check List and Authors
NOTES ON GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION
First record of the myxomycete genus Colloderma in Central
America
Carlos Rojas1*, Carlos Lado2 and Randall Valverde1
1 Forest Resources Unit, Engineering Research Institute, University of Costa Rica, San Pedro de Montes de Oca, 11501 – Costa Rica
2 Real Jardín Botánico (CSIC), Plaza de Murillo 2, 28014 Madrid – Spain
* Corresponding author. Email: carlos.rojasalvarado@ucr.ac.cr
Abstract: The myxomycete genus Colloderma and the
species Colloderma oculatum are reported for the first
time in Central America. The species was recorded at
high elevations in the Talamanca Mountain Range
in Costa Rica during 2014 in a location where the
structure of myxomycete assemblages has been
historically associated with temperate rather than
tropical communities. Comments on the geographical
distribution and ecology of the species are included.
This record has increased the number of Costa Rican
myxomycetes to 213 according to the most updated
checklist.
in northern temperate forests of Europe and North
America (see Eliasson 1981; Schnittler and Novozhilov
1996; Stephenson 2004). For the Neotropics, few records
exist, and according to Lado and Wrigley de Basanta
(2008), the species has been recorded in Uruguay and
Ecuador. For Uruguay the record is from Paysandú, “sobre
estiércol de liebre (Lepus europaeus L.)” (García-Zorrón,
1977). For Ecuador there are four records (McHugh
2009) from Ayampe on Chrisophyllum (Sapotaceae) and
a Malvaceae, and from a locality close to Machalilla on
Armatocereus (Cactaceae). Recently, McHugh (2009),
also cited Colloderma oculatum in several locations from
Paraguay such as Lake Yapacarai, Boquerón, Guairá,
Amambay and Alto Paraná, always on bark studied using
the moist chamber culture technique.
In spite of such a limited known distribution, it is
very likely that the geographical extent of the species
may realistically show a broader pattern, which at
present is masked up by research limitations of
myxomycete research worldwide (see Stephenson et al.
2009). As such, the present geographical distribution
note constitutes a case in which an increased effort in
studying myxomycetes within a particular region has
generated information that was not published yet in
the scientific literature. In this manner, the objective
of this work is to officially report the genus Colloderma
and the species C. oculatum for the Central American
region for the first time, and to enlarge the geographical
distribution of both considerably. The importance of
this type of notes on a group, such as the myxomycetes,
relies in the fact that it provides baseline data for future
projects regarding biodiversity monitoring, microbial
ecology assessments and ecosystem management.
This study was carried out during 2014 as part of an
academic visit of the second author to the University of
Costa Rica. In an expedition to the Talamanca Mountain
Range on 30 October 2014, the area of Cerro de la
Muerte was selected for a field survey of myxomycetes
due to its historical record. In particular, a forest patch
Key words: biogeography, Mesoamerica,
myxogastrids, Neotropics, slime molds
The myxomycete genus Colloderma was described by Gulielma Lister in 1910 (Lister 1910) based on specimens
from Scotland and the original description of Didymium
oculatum C. Lippert, from Austria. Lister (1910) recognized that those specimens did not belong into the
Physaraceae and created the new genus with the combination of the species Colloderma oculatum (Lippert)
G. Lister. In her description, Lister emphasized the eyelike appearance of the moist and unbroken sporangia,
which inspired Lippert to use the term “oculatum” in
order to describe the original specimens. In the third
edition of “A monograph of the Mycetozoa” (Lister 1925)
the genus Colloderma was included under the new family Collodermaceae, based on the outer gelatinous layer,
but Nannenga-Bremekamp (1967) stated that an outer
gelatinous wall occurs in other genera of myxomycetes,
and by the structure of the capillitium, very close to Diacheopsis, she included the genus Colloderma in the family
Stemonitidaceae (“Stemonitaceae”), a decision accepted
today.
About a hundred years after the species was described,
most of the records of C. oculatum have been found
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Rojas et al. | Colloderma in Central America
Figure 1. Map of Costa Rica showing the location of the collecting site (OA = Ojo de Agua), the extension of the Tropical Montane Wet Forest and the
borders of the two national parks surrounding the site. Insets show a detail of the collecting area and the general appearance (A and B) of the Quercus
forest patch where C. oculatum was found in the northern section of the Talamanca Mountain Range in Costa Rica. Datum used was WGS84.
The specimen of C. oculatum presented herein was
found on a dead branch of Quercus sp., ca. 7 cm in
diameter and with a large load of bryophytes and
liverworts on it. The collection was made at the end of
the rainy season in Costa Rica and the climate of the area
during the previous week was basically clear/sunny with
an average temperature of 21°C during the morning,
cloudy/rainy and with a temperature of ca. 15°C during
the afternoon and clear with a temperature reaching 7°C
at night. The forest patch where the collection was made
had a canopy openness close to 40%, and the canopy
was dominated by the temperate genus Quercus (Q.
costaricensis) whereas the Neotropical genus Chusquea
sp. was present in the understory, showing the mixture
of species from North and South America.
Description of observed material of Colloderma
oculatum: Sporocarps scattered to forming small groups
of two to three fruiting bodies, sessile, globose to
pulvinate, 0.9–1.4 mm in diameter, seating on a broad
brownish hypothallus. Peridium double, the outer
located on km 77 of the Southern Interamerican Route
(Ruta Nacional 2) was selected. This area is located
between the Tapantí and Los Quetzales National Parks
(Figure 1). The forests comprised between km 50 and 80
of this route have been surveyed for myxomycetes since
1962 (Alexopoulos and Sáenz 1975) and still continued
to generate important information for the study of
myxomycete biodiversity (e.g., Leontyev et al. 2014).
One specimen of C. oculatum was collected in
the mentioned patch and brought up to the Forest
Resources Unit of the University of Costa Rica for
further examination. The fresh collection showed the
morphological characteristics of the species according to
Lister (1910) and Martin and Alexopoulos (1969). Final
identification of the record was carried out by the second
author and after curation, the specimen was deposited
in the Myxogastrid Biorepository of the Engineering
Research Institute under collection number Ro-5395
(see Figure 2). The nomenclature of the species is that of
Lado (2005–2015).
Figure 2. Images of the C. oculatum collection Ro-5395 from Costa Rica. Left, moist collection showing the characteristic eye-like appearance of the
species in the field. Right, dry collection as seen in the deposited voucher. Scale bar is approximately 1 mm long.
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Rojas et al. | Colloderma in Central America
of the genera Lamproderma and Alwisia that can be
currently considered endemic to the zone, also showing
the interesting patterns found there.
Independently, the specimen of C. oculatum recorded
herein was found on a log covered with bryophytes and
liverworts in a very similar manner as other habitat
descriptions for temperate records of the species (see
Lister 1910; Eliasson 1981; Schnittler and Novozhilov
1996; Stephenson 2004). Such observation may indicate
that this species requires an appreciable film of water on
the substrates that it forms fruiting bodies on, similarly
to the lifestyle of both bryophytes and liverworts. Of
course, it is somehow intuitive to think that the latter
requirement is necessary in a myxomycete species whose
fresh fruiting bodies have a wet appearance, but the fact
that an already described microhabitat for the species
was also recorded in our case may be an indication of an
association pattern.
layer thick, hyaline, gelatinous when wet and thin,
soft-cartilaginous, glossy olive brown when dry, and
the inner layer membranous and hyaline. Columella
absent. Capillitium a system of threads coming out of
the sporocarp base, 1–3 mm thick, lighter colored at the
extremes, with darker accretions. Spores blackish in
mass, grayish-brown under the microscope, spinulose,
globose to subglobose, 11–13 mm in diameter.
Specimen examined: Costa Rica, San José, Dota, Cerro
de la Muerte, Ojo de Agua, 09.61518° N, 083.81869° W,
ca. 3,000 m above sea level (a.s.l.), 30-X-2014, on a dead
branch of Quercus sp. cover with a load of bryophytes
and liverworts, leg. C. Lado, C. Rojas & R. Valverde,
Ro-5395. The characters found in the specimen examined
corresponded very well with those reported in most
publications of the species.
It is not surprising to record a new genus and species
of myxomycete from Central America given the fact
that the study of these organisms in that part of the
world has not had the history and characteristics of the
European or North American surveys. However, finding
C. oculatum in a tropical context and in particular in
the Talamanca Mountain Range in Costa Rica is very
interesting from both a distributional and ecological
points of view.
As mentioned before, this species has been primarily
recorded in temperate areas and this report is a valuable
contribution to its geographical distribution since it
extends the occurrence of the genus and the species to
Central America. Even though we know of a record from
Puerto Rico collected by M. Schnittler at approximately
800 m a.s.l. in El Yunque National Forest (University of
Arkansas 2015), the record in the present geographical
note provides the necessary evidence to show the
distribution of the species in the continental section of
the Middle Americas.
What seems more interesting is that the area of
Cerro de la Muerte in Costa Rica holds a myxomycete
assemblage that resembles the myxobiota of temperate
areas located thousands of kilometers away. Even
though this area has a clear Nearctic dominant tree
(Quercus sp.), it also has a large number of tropical
plant species of origin in Gondwanaland (i.e., Chusquea,
Weinmannia, members of Cyperaceae; see Iglesias et
al. 2011). This issue of myxomycete communities from
Cerro de la Muerte resembling temperate ones has been
addressed before (see Alexopoulos and Sáenz 1975; Rojas
and Stephenson 2007) and it shows the potential of the
area for biogeographical analysis and for comparative
studies of the evolutionary dynamics of myxomycetes.
The latter because even though plant communities
in this area are both from North and South America,
myxomycete communities resemble those from only
one area. From Cerro de la Muerte, Moreno et al. (2009)
and Leontyev et al. (2014) recently described species
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to thank the University of Costa Rica
for support through research codes 731-B4-072 and 731B5-062 from Vicerrectoría de Investigación. Fieldwork
was funded by research activity 731-B0-986 of the
Forest Resources Unit. The work also has been funded
by the Spanish Government grants CGL 2011-22684 and
CGL2014-52584. Finally, we would like to thank Pedro
Rojas from the Forest Resources Unit for his support in
the field.
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Authors’ contribution statement: CR wrote the manuscript, CL
collected and identified the specimen, RV provided illustrations,
support in the field and analyzed information.
Received: 28 May 2015
Accepted: 9 July 2015
Academic editor: Matias J. Cafaro
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