''Ganoderma meredithiae'' is a species of

bracket fungus A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. They come in four main pairs of shapes, as given in the box to the right, which also gives their n ...

in the family

Ganodermataceae The Ganodermataceae are a family (biology), family of fungi in the order Polyporales. , Index Fungorum accepts 8 genus, genera and 300 species in the family. The family was circumscription (taxonomy), circumscribed by Dutch mycologist Marinus An ...

. Described as new to science in 1988 by mycologists James E. Adaskaveg and Robert Lee Gilbertson, the

holotype A holotype (Latin: ''holotypus'') is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of s ...

was collected in 1985 near

Pineville, Louisiana Pineville is a city in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, United States. It is located across the Red River from the larger Alexandria, and is part of the Alexandria Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 14,555 at the 2010 census. It had ...

. ''G. meredithiae'' is named in honor of mycologist

Meredith Blackwell Meredith May Blackwell (born 1940) is an American mycologist, known as one of the world's leading experts on fungi associated with arthropods. Education and career Meredith Blackwell graduated in 1961 with B.S. in biology from the University of ...

. The species' complete

mitochondrial genome Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA and mDNA) is the DNA located in the mitochondria organelles in a eukaryotic cell that converts chemical energy from food into adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Mitochondrial DNA is a small portion of the DNA contained in ...

was published in 2015. The fungus is found in the southeastern United States in the

Gulf Coast The Gulf Coast of the United States, also known as the Gulf South or the South Coast, is the coastline along the Southern United States where they meet the Gulf of Mexico. The coastal states that have a shoreline on the Gulf of Mexico are Tex ...

region from east

Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States Georgia may also refer to: People and fictional characters * Georgia (name), a list of pe ...

. It causes

white rot A wood-decay or xylophagous fungus is any species of fungus that digests moist wood, causing it to rot. Some species of wood-decay fungi attack dead wood, such as ''Serpula lacrymans'', and some, such as '' Armillaria'' (honey fungus), are par ...

and

butt rot Butt rot is a disease of plants, mostly trees, caused by fungus, fungi. The fungus attacks the moist, poorly protected undersurface of a tree trunk's thickest part (the "butt" above the root, as opposed to "top"), where the end of the plant stem, ...

on living

pine A pine is any conifer tree or shrub in the genus ''Pinus'' () of the family Pinaceae. ''Pinus'' is the sole genus in the subfamily Pinoideae. ''World Flora Online'' accepts 134 species-rank taxa (119 species and 15 nothospecies) of pines as cu ...

s, including

loblolly pine ''Pinus taeda'', commonly known as loblolly pine, is one of several pines native to the Southeastern United States, from East Texas to Florida, and north to southern New Jersey. The wood industry classifies the species as a southern yellow pi ...

(''Pinus taeda'') and

spruce pine A spruce is a tree of the genus ''Picea'' ( ), a genus of about 40 species of coniferous evergreen trees in the family Pinaceae, found in the northern temperate and boreal (taiga) regions of the Northern hemisphere. ''Picea'' is the sole genus ...

(''Pinus glabra'').

References

Fungi described in 1988 Fungi of the United States Fungal plant pathogens and diseases meredithiae Fungi without expected TNC conservation status Fungus species {{Polyporales-stub