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Arthroderma in the fur of wild rodents
Moulíková, Štěpánka ; Kolařík, Miroslav (advisor) ; Koukol, Ondřej (referee)
Arthroderma is the most diverse genus of dermatophytes, fungi causing skin infections. However, the genus is most frequently isolated from soil enriched by keratin sources. In my study, I isolated several strains of Arthroderma from the fur of wild rodents from the Czech Republic. Using polyphasic taxonomy, I characterised the 29 strains genetically (ITS rDNA, tubb and tef1α), morphologically, physiologically, and by mating experiments. In the second part of the study, we used data mining of ITS sequence data from GenBank and GlobalFungi Database to further investigate biogeography and ecology of Arthroderma species. In total, eight Arthroderma species were isolated, including four new species. The geographical distribution of the new species was not restricted to the Czech Republic nor rodents, other strains have been isolated from different animal species and soil from Europe, North America and Asia. Data obtained by data mining confirmed that the genus has diverse ecology - some lineages seem to be closely associated with animals (here described A. rodenticum), while others occur typically in soil. However, low numbers of sequence reads of Arthroderma in soil show that the species are not soil generalists but rather dependent on keratin source. This is the first study using data mining to assess...
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