Biological Species in Pleurotus
RONALD H. PETERSEN, KAREN W. HUGHES, AND NADEZHDA PSURTSEVA
Nematophagy
Barron (1977) explored the adhesive microdroplets of Nematoctonus (the anamorphic state of the basidiomycete genus Hohenbuehelia), but later expanded this work (Thorn and Barron, 1984) to Pleurotus and other wood-decay basidiomycetes. More recently, it has been found that Pleurotus species (among others) seek out and parasitize bacteria (Thorn and Tsuneda, 1992). The nematotoxic microdroplets found in Pleurotus differ from those in Hohenbuehelia by the simplicity of the hyphal branch which produces the microdroplet; a simple tapering peg in Pleurotus, a gloeosphex structure in Hohenbuehelia. Biochemistry of the toxin in Pleurotus microdroplets has been ellucidated (Kwok et al., 1992).