Phylogeny and species delimitations in the entomopathogenic genus (Hypocreales, Ascomycota), including the description of sp. nov.

The genus is considered a cosmopolitan anamorphic and teleomorphic genus of soilborne necrotrophic arthropod-pathogenic fungi that includes ecologically and economically important species. Species identification in is difficult because of its structural simplicity and the lack of distinctive phenotypic variation. Therefore, the use of multi-locus sequence data is essential to establish robust species boundaries in addition to DNA-based species delimitation methods using genetic distance, coalescent, and genealogical concordance approaches (polyphasic approaches). In this regard, our study used multilocus phylogeny and five DNA-based methods to delimit species in using three molecular makers. These polyphasic analyses allowed for the delimitation of 20-28 species in , confirming cryptic diversity in five species (i.e. , , , and ) and supporting the description of as a new taxon from northeastern Peru. The other five species were not evaluated as they did not have enough data (i.e. , , , , and ). Our results demonstrate that the congruence among different methods in a polyphasic approach (e.g. genetic distance and coalescence methods) is more likely to show reliably supported species boundaries. Among the methods applied in this study, genetic distance, coalescent approaches, and multilocus phylogeny are crucial when establishing species boundaries in .