INTRODUCTION
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, Fisher, & Bates, 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 globalisation (Fisher et al., 2012; Ghosh et al., 2020). Urbanisation can be a key driver of disease emergence, facilitating transmission due to newly overlapping geographic expansions (Hassell, Begon, Ward, & Fèvre, 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, Hambleton, & Pare, 2013). Among several species from this genus identified as reptile pathogens, infection withNannizziopsis barbatae has become increasingly observed in free-living populations of Australian reptiles with a wide variety of species being reported with this disease (Peterson et al., 2020). Urban wildlife populations in particular have become a focal point for outbreaks and the need for effective detection and monitoring of pathogen occurrence is considered vital for mitigating the spread and to minimise any potential for transmission to humans (Ghosh et al., 2018). Molecular diagnostic tests are powerful tools for disease surveillance offering a low cost and rapid means to assist in the early detection in both captive and wild populations (Boyle, Boyle, Olsen, Morgan, & Hyatt, 2004). Such tools also enable long-term tracking of pathogens which facilitate the study of often complex host-pathogen interactions, such as how disease tolerance may effect prevalence and transmission (Seal, Dharmarajan, & Khan, 2021; Tedersoo, Drenkhan, Anslan, Morales‐Rodriguez, & Cleary, 2019). Genomic data are valuable resources for the development of diagnostic tools enabling swift identification of target regions for designing highly specific markers, and these data can also serve as a foundation for studies on the molecular basis for pathogen evolution (DeCandia, Dobson, & VonHoldt, 2018; Ghosh et al., 2020, 2021). A rapid diagnostic tool to confirm the presence ofN. barbatae in clinical samples is currently unavailable. AsNannizziopsis fungi are typically first isolated on selective media prior to PCR and sequencing, laboratory diagnosis may involve delays of up to a week due to the slow growth of these species. The aim of this study is to develop a molecular diagnostic for the specific detection of N. barbatae infections and to contribute genomic resources for further research into this group of emerging fungal pathogens.