Abstract

In Chile, species of true morels have traditionally been identified on the basis of few morphological characteristics, but overall the genus Morchella has been poorly investigated and no studies combining morphological with molecular data exist. Here, Morchella collections from native forests of Nothofagus in Chilean Patagonia were characterized by combining morphological taxonomy with four-gene phylogenetic analysis. The phylogenetic relationships inferred from the concatenated dataset revealed that all collections belonged to the species-rich Elata clade and two new species were identified, which are formally described as M. andinensis and M. aysenina. Morchella andinensis was previously reported under the phylogenetic code Mel-37 from Argentinean Patagonia, while M. aysenina, which did not cluster with any other previously published groups of sequences, could be endemic to Chilean Patagonia. A third species, the transcontinental M. tridentina, is reported for the first time in Chile. It is hoped that these results will contribute to the limited knowledge of the genus Morchella in Chile and southern South America. Morchella andinensis and M. tridentina from Chilean and Argentinean Patagonia and M. aysenina constitute the southernmost collections of morels in the Southern Hemisphere.