The fungal genus was formally established by Samson (1974) to accommodate M. camptospora, M. elegans and the variety M. elegans var. punicea and was typified by M. elegans.[2] The genus is characterized by branched, septate conidiophores with hyaline, flask-shaped phialides, 1–2-celled hyaline conidia mostly forming imbricate chains or slimy heads (Samson 1974;[2] Samson and Bigg 1988;[3] Samuels and Seifert 1991).[4]
The sexual morph of Mariannaea has been linked to genus Nectria (Samuels and Seifert 1991),[4] and genus Cosmospora (Gräfenhan et al. 2011).[5] However, Cosmospora and Nectria have been shown polyphyletic within the Nectriaceae family, while genus Mariannaea formed a monophyletic clade within Nectriaceae. Therefore, Gräfenhan et al. (2011) retained Mariannaea as a distinct genus in Nectriaceae.[5]
Five new species were further introduced in the genus (Crous et al. 2019;[6] Hyde et al. 2020b;[7] Boonmee et al. 2021;[8] Watanabe and Hirose 2021;[9] Yang et al. 2021).[10]
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^Watanabe, K.; Hirose, D. (2021). "A novel Mariannaea species isolated from decayed pine needles in Japan". Phytotaxa. 522 (3): 211–220. doi:10.11646/phytotaxa.522.3.4. S2CID241635609.
^ abYang, H.; Wang, G.N.; Zhang, H. (2021). "Mariannaea submersa sp. nov., with a new habitat and geographic record of Mariannaea catenulata". Mycosystema. 40 (6): 1286–1298.