Current Insight into Culture-Dependent and Culture- Independent Methods in Discovering Ascomycetous Taxa Wijayawardene, N. N. Sánchez Castro, Iván Consolidated species concept Fungal diversity Molecular taxonomy Morphological characters Polyphasic approach Traditional taxonomy This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. NSFC 31950410558, NSFC 31760013), the State Key Laboratory of Functions and Applications of Medicinal Plants, Guizhou Medicial University (No. FAMP201906K); Science and Technology Department of Guizhou Province (QKHRCPT [2017]5101) and High-Level Talent Recruitment Plan of Yunnan Provinces ("Young Talents" Program and "High-End Foreign Experts" Program). Nalin N. Wijayawardene and Dong-Qin Dai gratefully acknowledge Paul M. Kirk, Sandhya Jayasekara, Shalini Rajakaruna, D. Siril A. Wijesundara, Steve L. Stephenson, R.P. Prabat K. Jayasinghe, Samantha C. Karunarathne, Faruk Selcuk, Makbule Erdogdu and Kevin D. Hyde for their suggestions and support. Culture techniques are vital in both traditional and modern fungal taxonomy. Establishing sexual-asexual links and synanamorphs, extracting DNA and secondary metabolites are mainly based on cultures. However, it is widely accepted that a large number of species are not sporulating in nature while others cannot be cultured. Recent ecological studies based on culture-independent methods revealed these unculturable taxa, i.e., dark taxa. Recent fungal diversity estimation studies suggested that environmental sequencing plays a vital role in discovering missing species. However, Sanger sequencing is still the main approach in determining DNA sequences in culturable species. In this paper, we summarize culture-based and culture-independent methods in the study of ascomycetous taxa. High-throughput sequencing of leaf endophytes, leaf litter fungi and fungi in aquatic environments is important to determine dark taxa. Nevertheless, currently, naming dark taxa is not recognized by the ICN, thus provisional naming of them is essential as suggested by several studies. 2021-11-03T08:48:27Z 2021-11-03T08:48:27Z 2021-08-28 info:eu-repo/semantics/article Wijayawardene, N.N.; Bahram, M.; Sánchez-Castro, I.; Dai, D.-Q.; Ariyawansa, K.G.S.U.; Jayalal, U.; Suwannarach, N.; Tedersoo, L. Current Insight into Culture Dependent and Culture-Independent Methods in Discovering Ascomycetous Taxa. J. Fungi 2021, 7, 703. [https://doi.org/10.3390/ jof7090703] http://hdl.handle.net/10481/71244 10.3390/ jof7090703 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Atribución 3.0 España MDPI