Whole‐mitochondrial genomes of Nannizziopsis provide insights in evolution and detection

Abstract

Diseases-causing fungi pose a serious threat to wildlife populations, yet despite the impact they have had on global biodiversity, they are notably understudied (Ghosh et al., 2018). New fungal pathogens are emerging that are capable of infecting an increasingly diverse range of taxa and their impacts are being exacerbated by changing climate conditions and globalization (Fisher et al., 2012;Ghosh et al., 2020).Urbanization can be a key driver of disease emergence, facilitating transmission due to newly overlapping geographic expansions (Hassell et al., 2017), increasing the risk of disease spillover from wildlife into humans and other animals (Heesterbeek et al., 2015).Reports of emerging fungal pathogens are rising (Fisher et al., 2020) and over the past few decades, a group of Onygenalean fungi from the genera Nannizziopsis, Paranannizziopsis, and Ophidiomyces have emerged as a leading cause of severe mycoses in reptiles (Paré & Sigler, 2016).Fungi from the genus Nannizziopsis are capable of causing disease in several species of reptiles and have also been known to infect humans (Nourrisson et al., 2018). Infection in reptiles is contagious and initially presents as cutaneious disease with characteristic lesions forming crusts, ulcers, and hyperkeratosis that often progresses to fatal mycoses (Sigler et al., 2013). Among several species from this genus identified as reptile pathogens, infection with Nannizziopsis barbatae has become increasingly observed in free-living populations of Australian reptiles with a wide variety of species being reported