Analyses of genetic variation suggest that the pine rusts Cronartium flaccidum and Peridermium pini belong to the same species.

Cronartium flaccidum and Peridermium pini are rust fungi occurring on two-needle hard pines. According to previous molecular and morphological analyses, they are very closely related despite differences in their life- cycles. In this study we showed that although a low level of genetic differentiation occurs among populations of both P. pini and C. flaccidum, there is no overall differentiation between the two rusts, and in this respect they resemble a single taxon. We also observed evidence for linkage disequilibrium occurring between different alleles of separate loci of Peridermium pini suggesting that its population structure would be clonal. This suggests that strains of P. pini would have originated as asexual or self-fertilizing host range mutants of C. flaccidum.