Red yeasts from leaf surfaces and other habitats: three new species and a new combination of ().

Our understanding of the systematics of red yeasts has greatly improved with the availability of sequence data and it is now clear that the majority of these fungi belong to three different classes of (): , , and . Despite improvements in phylogenetic placement, the taxonomy of these fungi has long been in need of revision and still has not been entirely resolved, partly due to missing taxa. In the present study, we present data of culture-based environmental yeast isolation, revealing several undescribed species of , which was recently introduced to accommodate six species previously placed in the asexual genera and in the / clade of . Based on molecular phylogenetic analyses of three rDNA loci, morphology, and biochemical studies, we formally describe the following new species: . from leaf surfaces in Portugal and the USA; . from leaf surfaces in Brazil, and the USA and decaying wood in the USA; and . from a beetle gut in the USA, leaf surfaces in Brazil and marine water in the Taiwan and Thailand. Finally, we propose a new combination for based on our molecular phylogenetic data, .