Antonio Ortega was the founder of the ‘mycoteque’ at the University of Granada Herbarium and a specialist in a greatly complex group of fungi
This new species is typically Mediterranean
Mycologist Rafael Mahiques has deposited a valuable specimen (isotype) of the mushroom Cortinarius Ortegae in the Mycological Collection «Profesor Antonio Ortega» at the University of Granada Herbarium, thus improving the collection housed at said Herbarium. This collection is the result of the research carried out, for more than 40 years, by Dr. Antonio Ortega, head mycologist from the Department of Botany at the University of Granada (UGR) and outstanding specialist in this complex group of fungi pertaining to the genus Cortinarius.
In November 2016, as a tribute to the outstanding work of Professor Ortega in the field of teaching, research and outreach of Mycology, the Mycological Collection «Profesor Antonio Ortega» was created at the ‘mycoteque’ -a ‘mushroom library’- that he himself founded in the 70s at the Department of Botany of the Faculty of Science.
According to Pedro M. Sánchez Castillo, director of the Herbarium, «as a whole, the collection at our mycoteque has a marked Andalusian accent, being this the usual sampling and study territory of Dr. Ortega, although it also houses samples from different places of the Spanish geography as a result of his participation in conferences and various mycological events as well as the numerous exchanges he promoted with other Spanish researchers and other Mediterranean countries.»
The special interest of Dr. Ortega for the group of Agarics and specially for the genus Cortinarius is well evident in his collection, since 11% of the specimens correspond to said genus. Among his contributions to the knowledge about cortinars are the 18 species described by him and his collaborators. The 18 type species (those specimens on which new species are described) are part of the catalog of nomenclatural types of fungi and lichens present at the UGR Herbarium, in whose elaboration plays a prominent role Maria Teresa Vizoso, one of the students of professor Antonio Ortega.
In addition to his dedication to those fungi, Dr. Ortega stood out for his deep knowledge of Andalusian mycoflora: he was actively involved in different projects of the Plan for the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Mushrooms and Truffles of Andalusia (the CUSSTA Plan, from its name in Spanish). His participation in that project explains the existence of some duplicates of the specimens present at the JA‑CUSSTA mycological herbarium.
A new species dedicated to Professor Antonio Ortega
The work where Professor Mahiques and his collaborators describe the new species, focused on the taxonomic and genetic diversity of a section of the genus Cortinarius, has allowed the identification of 15 already known species and the discovery of a new species, Cortinarius Ortegae, which is described for the first time in the article published in the specialized journal Mycological Progress in 2018.
The concept of species in this group of fungi has been very controversial, making the understanding of its taxonomic diversity very difficult. Recent phylogenetic studies, including that of Professor Ortega and collaborators (Ortega et al., 2008), have started to build a more grounded basis for circumscribing its different species.
This new species of cortinar is a robust mushroom, of brown‑ochraceous color, with orange tints, grayish‑pink to lilac gills and a short, white and later ochraceous stem, with an evident basal bulb and the presence of a whitish veil or curtain (character that gives name to the genre) and tonsillar spores, ornamented with warts as main diagnostic characters. The morphology and ecology of the new species can be seen in the attached sheet.
In general, species of the genus Cortinarius are associated with forest formations in ecosystems covering a wide climatic gradient (temperate to arctic‑alpine) of both hemispheres. This new species is part of a group of approximately one hundred that are distributed mainly in the Northern Hemisphere and basically associated with flat‑leaf trees of the family Fagaceae (oaks, holm oaks and chestnuts). However, so far the new cortinar has been found only in two oak groves, one at the natural monument of Fonts Ufanes in Mallorca and another one in Valencia, so it is mostly a typical Mediterranean species.
The publication describing this new cortinar also provides a dichotomous key that allows field recognition of the species of cortinar from the Calochroi section in the different Iberian forests. In addition, their contributions include information on the distribution of intraspecific lineages that, in this group of cortinars, seem to be related to geography and, in some cases, to the host tree and its diversification. Dating analyses suggest that the diversification of this group began during the Pliocene and that most of the current genetic diversity originated during the Pleistocene. All this seems to point out that the climatic oscillations of the Quaternary could have driven the evolution of this group of ectomycorrhizal fungi.
Bibliographic references:
Mahiques, R., Ballarà, J., Salom, J.C. et al. Mycol Progress (2018) 17: 815.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11557-018-1394-5
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