''Sarcoscypha'' is a

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

ascomycete Ascomycota is a phylum of the kingdom Fungi that, together with the Basidiomycota, forms the subkingdom Dikarya. Its members are commonly known as the sac fungi or ascomycetes. It is the largest phylum of Fungi, with over 64,000 species. The def ...

fungus and a type genus of the

family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...

Sarcoscyphaceae The ''Sarcoscyphaceae'' are a family (biology), family of cup fungus, fungi in the order Pezizales. Members of the Sarcoscyphaceae are cosmopolitan distribution, cosmopolitan in distribution, found in both tropical and temperate regions. Genera ...

. Species of ''Sarcoscypha'' are present in

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

and tropical

Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

. They are characterised by a cup-shaped apothecium which is often brightly coloured. They have had a range of popular uses, one of which was as a table decoration. Some members of the family such as ''S. coccinea'' and the - according to new knowledge - more common ''S. austriaca'' in

western Europe Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's extent varies depending on context. The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the Western half of the ancient Mediterranean ...

and

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

have bright scarlet apothecia which have given them familiar names such as the scarlet cup fungus and scarlet elf cap. The name comes from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

skyphos A skyphos (; : skyphoi) is a two-handled deep wine-cup on a low flanged base or none. The handles may be horizontal ear-shaped thumbholds that project from the rim (in both Corinthian and Athenian shapes), or they may be loop handles at the rim ...

'' meaning ''drinking bowl''. Anamorphic forms were given the genus name, ''Molliardiomyces'', but with single name nomenclature in fungi, the latter name is considered a synonym and no longer used.

Description

Species in ''Sarcoscypha'' have cup-shaped fruiting bodies (

apothecia An ascocarp, or ascoma (: ascomata), is the fruiting body ( sporocarp) of an ascomycete phylum fungus. It consists of very tightly interwoven hyphae and millions of embedded asci, each of which typically contains four to eight ascospores. As ...

) that are typically colored bright red or yellow, although a colorless variety of ''S. coccinea'' is known. Apothecia usually have a stipe, although some individuals may appear to be attached directly (i.e., sessile) to the growing surface. Asci are cylindrical in shape, thick-walled, and have an apical operculum—a cover or lid that is opened prior to

spore In biology, a spore is a unit of sexual reproduction, sexual (in fungi) or asexual reproduction that may be adapted for biological dispersal, dispersal and for survival, often for extended periods of time, in unfavourable conditions. Spores fo ...

discharge.

Anamorph form

Anamorphic or imperfect fungi are those that seem to lack a sexual stage in their life cycle, and typically reproduce by the process of

mitosis Mitosis () is a part of the cell cycle in eukaryote, eukaryotic cells in which replicated chromosomes are separated into two new Cell nucleus, nuclei. Cell division by mitosis is an equational division which gives rise to genetically identic ...

in structures called

conidia A conidium ( ; : conidia), sometimes termed an asexual chlamydospore or chlamydoconidium (: chlamydoconidia), is an asexual, non- motile spore of a fungus. The word ''conidium'' comes from the Ancient Greek word for dust, ('). They are also ...

. In some cases, the sexual stage—or

teleomorph In mycology, the terms teleomorph, anamorph, and holomorph apply to portions of the life cycles of fungi in the phyla Ascomycota and Basidiomycota: *Teleomorph: the sexual reproductive stage (morph), typically a fruiting body. *Anamorph: an ase ...

stage—is later identified, and a teleomorph-anamorph relationship is established between the species. The

International Code of Botanical Nomenclature The ''International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants'' (ICN or ICNafp) is the set of rules and recommendations dealing with the formal botanical names that are given to plants, fungi and a few other groups of organisms, all tho ...

formerly permitted recognition of two (or more) names for one and the same organisms, one based on the teleomorph, the other(s) restricted to the anamorph; this practice was stopped in 2011. The anamorphic state of ''S. coccinea'' is ''Molliardiomyces eucoccinea'', first described by Marin Molliard in 1904. In 1972, John W. Paden again described the anamorph, but like Molliard, failed to give a complete description of the species. In 1984, Paden created a new genus ''Molliardiomyces'' to contain the anamorphic forms of several ''Sarcoscypha'' species, with ''Molliardiomyces eucoccinea'' as the type species. This form produces colorless

conidiophore A conidium ( ; : conidia), sometimes termed an asexual chlamydospore or chlamydoconidium (: chlamydoconidia), is an Asexual reproduction, asexual, non-motility, motile spore of a fungus. The word ''conidium'' comes from the Ancient Greek word f ...

s (specialized stalks that bear

) that are usually irregularly branched, measuring 30–110 by 3.2–4.7 μm. The conidia are

ellipsoidal An ellipsoid is a surface that can be obtained from a sphere by deforming it by means of directional scalings, or more generally, of an affine transformation. An ellipsoid is a quadric surface; that is, a surface that may be defined as the ze ...

to egg-shaped, smooth, translucent (

hyaline A hyaline substance is one with a glassy appearance. The word is derived from , and . Histopathology Hyaline cartilage is named after its glassy appearance on fresh gross pathology. On light microscopy of H&E stained slides, the extracellula ...

), and 4.8–16.0 by 2.3–5.8 μm; they tend to accumulate in "mucilaginous masses".

Habitat

Members of the Sarcoscyphaceae grow as saprotrophs on dead wood, and especially in the case of ''Sarcoscypha'', on mostly damp branches or twigs of hard-wood species often in association with damp loving

moss Mosses are small, non-vascular plant, non-vascular flowerless plants in the taxonomic phylum, division Bryophyta (, ) ''sensu stricto''. Bryophyta (''sensu lato'', Wilhelm Philippe Schimper, Schimp. 1879) may also refer to the parent group bryo ...

es. There is a strong association with damp places and north facing slopes. Typical locations include woods in damp stream valleys. Fruiting in most species tends to be in late winter or early spring with fruiting bodies produced on the dead wood within which the

mycelium Mycelium (: mycelia) is a root-like structure of a fungus consisting of a mass of branching, thread-like hyphae. Its normal form is that of branched, slender, entangled, anastomosing, hyaline threads. Fungal colonies composed of mycelium are fo ...

grows, although in some cases the apothecium appears to arise from amongst moss or from the leaf-litter. Because of their brilliant colour, many species are very easy to see in damp woodlands before spring growth has started. In areas with a

continental climate Continental climates often have a significant annual variation in temperature (warm to hot summers and cold winters). They tend to occur in central and eastern parts of the three northern-tier continents (North America, Europe, and Asia), typi ...

, fruiting bodies may be developed underneath snow and are only revealed at the thaw.

Phylogeny

The

phylogenetic In biology, phylogenetics () is the study of the evolutionary history of life using observable characteristics of organisms (or genes), which is known as phylogenetic inference. It infers the relationship among organisms based on empirical dat ...

relationships in the genus ''Sarcoscypha'' were analyzed by Francis Harrington in the late 1990s. The

cladistic Cladistics ( ; from Ancient Greek 'branch') is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized in groups ("clades") based on hypotheses of most recent common ancestry. The evidence for hypothesized relationships is ...

analysis combined comparison of

sequences In mathematics, a sequence is an enumerated collection of objects in which repetitions are allowed and order matters. Like a set, it contains members (also called ''elements'', or ''terms''). The number of elements (possibly infinite) is call ...

from the

internal transcribed spacer Internal transcribed spacer (ITS) is the spacer DNA situated between the small-subunit ribosomal RNA (rRNA) and large-subunit rRNA genes in the chromosome or the corresponding transcribed region in the polycistronic rRNA precursor transcript. ...

in the non-functional

RNA Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is a polymeric molecule that is essential for most biological functions, either by performing the function itself (non-coding RNA) or by forming a template for the production of proteins (messenger RNA). RNA and deoxyrib ...

in addition to fifteen traditional morphological characters, such as spore features, fruit body shape, and degree of hair curliness. Based on this analysis, one major clade includes the species ''S. austriaca'', ''S. macaronesica'', ''S. knixoniana'' and ''S. humberiana'', while another has ''S. korfiana'', ''S. occidentalis'', ''S. mesocyatha'', ''S. dudleyi'', ''S. emarginata'', and ''S. hosoyae''. ''S. jarvensis'' is sister to all these species.

Species

According to the 10th edition of the ''Dictionary of the Fungi'' (2008), there are about 28 species in the genus. An incomplete list follows: *'' S. austriaca'' *'' S. coccinea'' *'' S. dudleyi'' *''S. emarginata'' *''S. excelsa'' *''S. hosoyae'' *''S. humberiana'' *''S. javensis'' *''S. jurana'' *''S. knixoniana'' *''S. korfiana'' *''S. lilliputiana'' *''S. macaronesica'' *''S. mesocyatha'' *'' S. occidentalis'' *''S. serrata'' *''S. shennongjiana'' *''S. vassiljevae'' The species ''Nanoscypha striatispora'', formerly included in this list as ''S. striatispora'', was transferred to the genus '' Nanoscypha'' to support a

monophyly In biological cladistics for the classification of organisms, monophyly is the condition of a taxonomic grouping being a clade – that is, a grouping of organisms which meets these criteria: # the grouping contains its own most recent comm ...

for ''Sarcoscypha''.

References

External links

European and North American species of Sarcoscypha
by H. O. Baral

Comparison of three similar ''Sarcoscypha'' species {{Taxonbar, from=Q1187893 Sarcoscyphaceae Pezizales genera Taxa named by Elias Magnus Fries ca:Sarcoscypha coccinea pms:Sarcoscypha coccinea