Polytolypa is a monotypic genus of fungus containing the single species Polytolypa hystricis. First classified in the Onygenaceae family, as of 2008 it is considered to be in the Ajellomycetaceae, although there is still uncertainty as to its phylogenetic relationships with other similar genera. This species is only known from a single specimen derived in the laboratory from a specimen of dung of the North American porcupine, Erethizon dorsatum, collected in Ontario, Canada. Polytolypa hystricis contains bioactive compounds that have antifungal activity.
GENUS
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Polytolypa is a monotypic genus of fungus containing the single species Polytolypa hystricis. First classified in the Onygenaceae family, as of 2008 it is considered to be in the Ajellomycetaceae, although there is still uncertainty as to its phylogenetic relationships with other similar genera. This species is only known from a single specimen derived in the laboratory from a specimen of dung of the North American porcupine, Erethizon dorsatum, collected in Ontario, Canada. Polytolypa hystricis contains bioactive compounds that have antifungal activity.
==Taxonomy, phylogeny, and naming== thumb|160px|left|Polytolypa hystricis was initially grown from the dung of the North American porcupine, Erethizon dorsatum (pictured).The genus was first described in 1993 by University of Toronto mycologists J.A. Scott and D.W. Malloch, who grew the fungus in moist chamber cultures of porcupine dung collected in Stoneleigh, Ontario, Canada. The generic name Polytolypa is from the Greek word poly (πολυ) meaning "many", and tolype (τολυπη), meaning "skein of yarn". The specific epithet hystricis comes from the Greek hystrix (υστριξ), or "porcupine".
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).