Based on partial sequences of the nuclear large subunit ribosomal (LSU) DNA,

Kurtzman & Robnett (1998) studied the phylogeny of ascomycetous yeasts

including 15 Debaryomyces species. These 15 taxa were separated into four
clades, exemplified by the species D. hansenii, D. polymorphus, D. melissophilus
and D. etchellsii, respectively. The clade represented by D. hansenii included five
more teleomorph species, D. nepalensis, D. maramus, D. coudertii, D. robertsiae
and D. udenii, and is here referred to as the D. hansenii clade sensu Kurtzman &
Robnett (1998). According to highly similar D1/D2 LSU sequences this clade also
includes D. prosopidis, a species that resembles D. hansenii physiologically. Phaff
et al. (1998) distinguished both by the inability of D. prosopidis to grow on
cellobiose and salicin, low DNA reassociation values and opposed electrophoretic
karyotypes.
Since then, it has become more and more obvious that D. hansenii is a complex
of several, often cryptic, species. Prillinger et al. (1999), based on comparison of
random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) patterns, proposed to raise the two
varieties of D. hansenii to species level, i.e., the reinstatement of D. hansenii and
D. fabryi. Their proposal was supported by the authors of subsequent studies
applying many different methods (Groenewald et al., 2008; Nguyen et al., 2009;
Jacques et al., 2009; Kurtzman and Suzuki, 2010). Groenewald et al. (2008) after
a polyphasic re-examination of numerous strains suggested the reinstatement of
D. subglobosus, treated among the synonyms of D. hansenii var. fabryi
(Groenewald et al., 2008). Nguyen et al. (2009) analysed the Alu1 fingerprints of
Chapter 3
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the intergenic spacer (IGS) region of more than 170 Debaryomyces strains and
described D. vietnamensis which belonged to the core group of the genus. Jacques
et al. (2009) based on the investigation of the intron sequences of four
housekeeping genes and the actin (ACT1) coding gene sequences proposed
raising of Candida famata var. flareri to species level with the reinstatement of
Candida flareri and the reinstatement of D. tyrocola (treated earlier as a synonym
of D. hansenii var. hansenii). However, this latter species is still close to D.
hansenii by ACT1 coding sequence comparison alone (Nguyen et al., 2009).
Jacques et al. (2009) also described a new species D. macquariensis to
accommodate the strain CBS 5572. Kurtzman and Suzuki (2010) investigated the
combined sequences of the D1/D2 domains of the large subunit and the nearly
complete small subunit rRNA genes of ascomycetous yeasts forming coenzyme
Q-9. As a result of their analysis they proposed five phylogenetically
circumscribed new genera and restricted Debaryomyces to those species that are
phylogenetically closely related to D. hansenii, the type species of the genus.
Dlauchy et al. (2011) recovered three yeast strains, which are phenotypically
indistinguishable from Debaryomyces hansenii, from mineral deposits in the
Crystal Eyes Cave, Mountain, Venezuela. Based on the sequence divergence
along the nearly entire SSU rRNA gene, the ITS regions and the D1/D2 domains
of the LSU rRNA gene confirmed the placement of these strains in the genus
Debaryomyces, but relationship with all valid species of D. hansenii complex was
distant. Based on the observed considerable sequence divergence, the three strains
were proposed as a new species, D. psychrosporus.