Aquatic fungi include those that occur in freshwater, marine, and brackish water habitats. In China, aquatic fungi have been investigated since 1920s. In this paper, we summarized the known data and provided a comprehensive list of aquatic fungi in China. To date, 969 species have been reported in China, including 782 and 213 species from freshwater and marine habitats, respectively, with 26 overlaps. The 782 freshwater species comprise 25 chytridiomycetes, 256 ascomycetes, 416 hyphomycetes, 63 oomycetes, and 22 zygomycetes. The 213 marine species comprise 117 ascomycetes, 48 hyphomycetes, 1 basidiomycete, 5 oomycetes, and 42 yeasts. Although the aquatic fungi in China are still poorly investigated, with most areas of the territory untouched, the number of recorded species is higher than most of the other countries in the world. The investigation of aquatic fungi in China is patchy as most species were reported from the southwest areas. There is little overlapped taxa found on different substrata, which implies that most aquatic fungi may have a substrate preference.

Spore morphologies are a major character in fungal taxonomy, although many isolates are not able to sporulate on common artificial media. This article reviews the effect of nutrition, host tissue, and light on fungal sporulation in artificial media. A trial experiment using 42 strains that failed to sporulate on potato dextrose agar (PDA) and half-strength PDA after 3 months is reported. Five strategies (1/10-strength PDA, CaCO₃ water agar, pine needle medium, mulberry agar, and near-ultraviolet light irradiation) were applied to induce these strains to sporulate, with an overall success rate of 62%. Pine needle medium was the most successful method, which induced sporulation of 40% of recalcitrant strains.

Colletotrichum coccodes is a well-studied and important pathogen responsible for black dot disease on potato and anthracnose disease on many plants, including tomato and hemp. The type specimen of C. coccodes is lost and, therefore, a neotype with living cultures is designated to stabilize the application of the species name. The morphology of conidia, appressoria and cultural characters of the ex-neotype culture is provided. Five gene fragments of the ex-neotype culture were sequenced and deposited in GenBank. Phylogenetic analysis shows that C. coccodes is distant from the C. gloeosporioides complex, but has a close relationship with a few curved spored species, such as C. liriopes, C. verruculosum and C. spaethianum, as indicated by strong statistical support. The designation of this type specimen with living culture for C. coccodes will facilitate subsequent taxonomic work in the genus and serve as a foundation for applied research of this important pathosystem.