## 2 Materials and Methods
### Culturable Fungal Isolation, Identification and Analysis  
For direct fungal isolation each aliquot was suspended in 2 mL of sterile 0.9% (\(w\)/\(v\)) NaCl solution, and vortexed. A volume of 100 \(\upmu\)L was inoculated in six different culture media: potato dextrose agar (PDA); dichloran-glycerol agar (DG-18); malt extract agar supplemented with 10% NaCl (\(w\)/\(v\)) (MEA 10%); Czapek solution agar (CZ); rose bengal agar base (RB) and DSMZ 372-Halobacteria medium supplemented with 10% NaCl (\(w\)/\(v\)) (HM 10%), in triplicate. All culture media were supplemented with streptomycin (0.5 gL\({}^{-1}\)) to prevent bacterial growth. In inoculated media plates were incubated aerobically, in the dark, at 25 \(\pm\) 2 \({}^{\circ}\)C, for 6 months. Emerging colonies showing significantly different morphologies (in each culture medium) were isolated to axenic cultures for DNA extraction. DNA extraction from pure cultures was conducted with the REDextract-N.Amp(tm) Plant PCR Kit (Sigma Aldrich, St. Louis, MO, USA), with several modifications. A small portion (\(\sim\)1 mm\({}^{2}\)) of the colonies was scraped from the agar surface, into a PCR-style microtube, submerged in 20 \(\upmu\)L of extraction solution and incubated in the thermocycler using the following protocol: 94 \({}^{\circ}\)C for 10 min, followed by 60 \({}^{\circ}\)C for 13 min and 10 \({}^{\circ}\)C for 15 min. After incubation, 20 \(\upmu\)L of dilution solution were added, and the resulting mixture was vortexed for 2 min. Obtained DNA was used for the amplification of the ITS-rDNA region by PCR, using the fungal universal primer pair ITS1-F and ITS4 [56; 57]. PCR reactions, consisting of a final amplification volume of 25 \(\upmu\)L, with 12.5 \(\upmu\)L of NZYTaG Green Master Mix (NZYTech(tm), Lisbon, Portugal), 1 \(\upmu\)L of each primer (10 mM), 9.5 \(\upmu\)L of ultra-pure water and 1 \(\upmu\)L of template DNA, were performed using an ABI GeneAmp(tm) 9700 PCR System (Applied Biosystems, Waltham, MA, USA), with the following conditions: initial denaturation at 95 \({}^{\circ}\)C for 5 min, followed by 35 cycles of denaturation at 94 \({}^{\circ}\)C for 30 s, annealing at 52 \({}^{\circ}\)C for 30 s, and extension at 72 \({}^{\circ}\)C for 1 min, with a final extension at 72 \({}^{\circ}\)C for 8 min. Visual confirmation of the overall amplification of the ITS region was performed using agarose gel electrophoresis (1.2%) stained with GreenSafe Premium (NZYTech(tm), Lisbon, Portugal) and visualized in an Molecular Imager Bio-Rad Gel Doc XR(tm) (Bio-Rad, Hercules, CA, USA). Obtained amplicons were purified with the EXO/SAP Go PCR Purification Kit (GRISP, Porto, Portugal), following the manufacturer's recommendations, and sequenced using an ABI 3730 xl DNA Analyzer system (96 capillary instruments) at STABVIDA, Portugal. Obtained ITS sequences were analyzed using Chromas v.2.6.6 (Technelyium, Southport, QLD, Australia) and deposited in the GenBank database with the accession numbers: OP315718; OP315750-OP315755; OP315757-OP315759; OP315761; OP315763-OP315774; OP315776-OP315777; OP315779; OP315789-OP315792; OP339490; OP339492; OP359020; and OP381494. Similarity searches were performed using the National Center of Biotechnology Information nucleotide database (NCBI's) basic local alignment search tool (BLAST), with the option standard nucleotide BLASTn of BLAST 2,6 [58]. Further confirmation of these results was performed using the online MycoBank database [59; 60], with the molecular ID pairwise alignment tool ([[https://www.mycobank.org/page/Pairwise_alignment](https://www.mycobank.org/page/Pairwise_alignment)]([https://www.mycobank.org/page/Pairwise_alignment](https://www.mycobank.org/page/Pairwise_alignment)) (accessed on 29 March 2022)) with the default parameters and all databases selected. To achieve a full agreement regarding species identification, molecular results were confirmed with an extensive macroscopic and microscopic analysis of taxonomic traits.