Podospora (?)

Hello!

Sorry for the wrong language, but unfortunately I'm only fluent in English. I'm very new to Coprophilous fungi but I hope to learn much more.

I found this fungus growing on Deer dung that has been incubating for 2.5 weeks now, collected in Berkeley, California (USA). When I saw the spore appendages I thought that meant it was Podospora, but now I'm not sure it isn't Arnium (or even something else in Sordariales)!

Asci appear to contain more than 64 spores (128?), And each spore is about 20 µm long. Perithecium opening is small, black, and covered in spikes.

Any advice on how to best get fungi like these to genus would be appreciated. From there I hope to use the available species keys to work it down, but it's hard to do that without knowing the genus!

thanks so much,

Jonah B.

Thank you Nobi!

I was hoping to get better photos of the bifid caudae to post here but it seems that the fruits appear and disappear pretty quickly. A few days later I found some but all the asci were far too immature.

Today I found some Podospora with mature spores, but found it difficult to pop the perithecia while keeping the asci intact so that I could count the spores. Do you have any tips on how to do this?

The perithecia on these are still hairy, and the asci still seem to have 128(?) spores (definitely more than 64).

The spores are also the same size as before. However, using Doveri's key the spores seem to match P. setosa better than P. bifida – they seem to lack a gelatinous sheath and I could only see 1 tail on all that I observed.

Do you agree with this assessment? If so, do you think it's likely that the ones before were also P. setosa, or that both species were present in the dung?

thanks again,

Jonah B.