Species and Intraspecies Level Diversity of Beauveria in Boreal Forests of Northwestern Russia
Diversity assessment of entomopathogenic fungi, including, inter alia, the members of genus Beauveria, was carried out in Northwestern Russia insufficiently. In respect to contemporary taxonomical changes based on molecular markers available data is poor and needs improvement. We established a species and intraspecies diversity of sixty Beauveria spp. isolates obtained from dead insects collected in Leningrad (2017), Novgorod (2018), Vologda (2018), Pskov (2013, 2018) oblasts and in Republic of Karelia (2017). Most of fungi were isolated from the beetles of subfamily Scolytinae. Beauveria pseudobassiana was the predominating species in the studied subset (with occurrence 75.0%). In less quantity B. bassiana (13.3%) and B. caledonica (11.7%) were isolated. The last species was considered as rare for Russia, only one finding was registered up to this time. The molecular analysis of Bloc and tef1α loci allowed to designate new broad clade inside B. pseudobassiana, comprised by haplotypes which were not published in nucleotide sequence databases previously. All other clades of the found species have broad geographical distribution.