The genus Phascolomyces tend to grow in dung of diverse animals like rabbits, rats, pigs, lambs, bats. Even so P. articulosus have been found just in rat dung, it is possible that it also grows up in other animal dung (De Azebedo, 2008 and Boetjin, 1954).
Phascolomyces articulosus was first described for Boedjin in 1954, and he classified it as an organism of the family Cunninghamellaceae, years after P. articulosus was moved to Thamnidiaceae, and lately reclassified it again in Lichtheimiaceae (Nordberg et al, 2014).
The colonies of P. articulosus are pale grey, and normally 1 ½ - 3 cm high. The cultures present darkly mottled on the reverse and change to blackish when older. The mycelium in substratum is highly branched, 12-50 µm in diameter forming intercalary, single or in short rows, globose, sub-globose, elongated till irregular shaped, greatly swollen brown colored cells with coarse granular contents. 108-380 x 72-180 µm. On natural substrata mostly smaller. The conidiophores are sympodially branched, the wall is granulated, eventually with a septum near the base of a side branch, sometimes it has oil and measure 3 ½ - 20 ½ µm and generally 10-12 µm of diameter. Also the presence of rhizoidal tufts on the aerial threads is not rare. All threads end in capitate vesicles 20-85 µm of diameter. Along the threads also lateral vesicles, either short stalked or wholly sessile 4-36 µm in diam. The sessile heads have irregular shaped or sometimes semiglobose. Conidia forme large sterigmata of 7-20 ½ x 1µm on the vesicles, they are globose, hyaline, smooth and about 7-17 µm of diameter when shed usually with part of the sterigma (Boedijn, K 1958).
Sporangiospore Structure: Phascolomyces articulosus produces dry, deciduous, pedicellate, single-spored sporangioles, which arise in groups from lateral and terminal vesicles on the aerial sporophores. The spore wall ofPhascolomyces articulosusis composed of two layers and exhibits a verrucose ornamentation (Jeffries and Young, 1978).
According to Noldberg (2014) Phascolomyces articulosusproduces globose unispored sporangia borne terminally on slender pedicles on sporangiophore vesicles, it also producesdarkly pigmented chlamydosporesin the substrate mycelium.This species is thought to be heterothallic because it does not produce zygospores in culture.
According to Lostau (1950) the macrospores have the form of big cell, mostly solo, they are born on the end of the branches. The bulbils colors are yellowish to brown and normally ovals, also considered as chlamydospores. The environment where is possible to find them are: stool, humus, and industrial products related with flour, or margarine..
Phascolomyces articulosus is considered the unique among mucoraceous hosts in being the only fungus known to exhibit resistance to the mycoparasite Piptocephalis virginiana, by producing a cytological barrier in response to an infection. In all other established cases of host-parasite interactions the mucoraceous hosts respond either as nonhosts or compatible hosts to this mycoparasite (Balasubramanian, R and Manocha, M. 1986).
Due to the delay of the host responses some organism as Dimargaris cristalligena could develop as a vigorous parasite of Phascolomyces articulosus, (Arora, 1991).
The production of cysteine type of proteinase is different for Phascolomyces articulosus, whereas in all the other studies on proteinases produced by mucoraceous fungi serine type of proteinase predominate (Fischer and Thomson 1979 and North 1982 cited by Balasubramanian, R., & Manocha, M. 1986).
There is no evidence around the use of this fungi in any medical or human important topic, however is possible to find the isolated culture by the ATCC web page with the number code 32882 (see the link on the reference) for 354$ (for-profit) and 294.99$ (non-profit), and the biosafety level based on the U.S Public Health Service is “1”, there is not required special permit to buy the isolated culture, however people that want to import the culture to Hawai require special documentation.
Nordberg et al. (2014) pointed out that Phascolomyces articulosus(RSA 2281) is a monotypic mucoralean genus that was originally isolated from rat dung in Bogor, Indonesia. Also Boedijn (1958) found P. articulosus from the soil of a coffee garden in Java, Indonesia. P. articulosus does not have other scientific name (http://www.mycobank.org).
The whole-genome ofP. articulosusshould advance our understanding of evolutionary relationships and genome evolution within the Mucorales and other early diverging fungi as part of the1000 Fungal Genome Project (Nordbergh, 2014). O’Donnell et al. (2000) indicated that multilocus molecular phylogenetic data indicateP. articulosusis distantly related to CunninghamellaandThamnidium, and Walther et al (2013) mentioned that its placement within the Lichtheimiaceae needs to be tested because this family may be non-monophyletic as currently classified (Walther et al. 2013 and O’Donnell et al. 2000 cited by Nordbergh. 2014). Multigene phylogenetic analyses by Gherbawy et al. (2010) support P. articulosus as being related to species of the Syncephalastraceae, supporting its current classification
