Biodiversity of Lecanosticta pine-needle blight pathogens suggests a Mesoamerican Centre of origin

<i>Lecanosticta acicola</i> causes the disease known as brown spot needle blight (BSNB), on <i>Pinus</i> species. The pathogen is thought to have a Central American centre of origin. This was based on the morphological variation between isolates believed to represent <i>L. acicola</i> from native <i>Pinus</i> spp. Two species of <i>Lecanosticta</i>, <i>L. brevispora</i> and <i>L. guatemalensis</i>, have recently been described from Mexico and Guatemala respectively based on morphology and sequence-derived phylogenetic inference. However, the putative native pathogen, <i>L. acicola,</i> was not found in those areas. In this study, the species diversity of a large collection of <i>Lecanosticta</i> isolates from Central America was considered. Phylogenetic analyses of the <i>BT</i>1, ITS, <i>MS204</i>, <i>RPB</i>2 and <i>TEF</i>1 gene regions revealed six species of <i>Lecanosticta</i>, four of which represented undescribed taxa. These are described here as <i>Lecanosticta jani</i> sp. nov. from Guatemala and Nicaragua, <i>L. pharomachri</i> sp. nov. from Guatemala and Honduras, <i>L. tecunumanii</i> sp. nov. from Guatemala and <i>L. variabilis</i> sp. nov. from Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. New host and country records were also found for the previously described <i>L. brevispora</i> and <i>L. guatemalensis. Lecanosticta acicola</i> was not found in any of the samples from Central America, and we hypothesize that it could be a northern hemisphere taxon. The high species diversity of <i>Lecanosticta</i> found in Mesoamerica suggests that this is a centre of diversity for the genus.