The Clavicipitaceae family, including saprobes and insect and myco-pathogens, are widely distributed in nature across various trophic regions, and play important roles in insect population control, plant interactions, and symbiotic evolution. Members of the genus Moelleriella within this family primarily specialize in infecting scale insects and whiteflies. Using five genomic loci (SSU, LSU, tef1-α, rpb1, and rpb2), we report on the inferred divergence times among members of Clavicipitaceae using molecular dating analyses. Molecular clock estimates revealed that the ancestor of Moelleriella likely emerged in the Late Cretaceous (91.60 Mya; 95% highest posterior density of 79.29–100.13 Mya). Historical biogeographic reconstruction of Moelleriella, performed using the Bayesian Binary Markov chain Monte Carlo (BBM) method, indicates that it most likely originated in Asia. Moreover, based on taxonomic and phylogenetic analyses, we describe three species within the genus Moelleriella, including one new species (Moelleriella microstroma) and two new records for China (Moelleriella chiangmaiensis and Moelleriella phukhiaoensis).
Lin et al. (Thu,) studied this question.