Limnoperdon

Limnoperdon is a fungal genus in the monotypic family Limnoperdaceae. The genus is also monotypic, as it contains a single species, the aquatic fungus Limnoperdon incarnatum. The species, described as new to science in 1976, produces fruit bodies that lack specialized structures such as a stem, cap and gills common in mushrooms. Rather, the fruit bodies—described as aquatic or floating puffballs—are small balls (0.5–1 mm diameter) of loosely interwoven hyphae. The balls float on the surface of the water above submerged twigs. Experimental observations on the development of the fruit body, based on the growth on the fungus in pure culture, suggest that a thin strand of mycelium tethers the ball above water while it matures. Fruit bodies start out as a tuft of hyphae, then become cup-shaped, and eventually enclose around a single chamber that contains reddish spores. Initially discovered in a marsh in the state of Washington, the fungus has since been collected in Japan, South Africa, and Canada.

==Taxonomy, classification and phylogeny== The family, genus and species were first described in a 1976 publication by graduate students Gustavo Escobar and Dennis McCabe, and undergraduate Craig Harpel who, in the fall of 1974, found the fungus as part of "a class project to find and isolate phycomycetes". The holotype is located in the University of Washington Mycological Herbarium. An isotype (duplicate of the holotype specimen) is located in the Herbarium of the University of El Salvador in San Salvador.