Isolation and identification of fungi, collected from Proteus anguinus and its immediate aquatic environment

Amphibians, including human fish, belong on a global scale to endangered groups of animals. The main threats include the destruction and pollution of their natural habitats and climate change. Considering the modest data of human fish pathogens in captivity and wild populations, we wanted to find out whether the fungi are also an additional threat. We were interested in the incidence of opportunistic pathogens that were recently detected as the causative agents of hitridiomycosis, mucormycosis, chromomycosis and saproleginosis. In addition, since there is no data available, we wanted to determine the presence of fungi in human fish microbial skin. During the diploma we isolated fungi from the immediate water environment of the human fish in nature and in captivity. At the locations such as Jelševnik, Krška and Planinska jama we sampled the water and we set the microbiological baits there. From the same locations, and additionally from Postojna Cave, we were taking samples from healthy and sick animals’ surfaces, and they were grown on different media at 15 ° C and 20 ° C. All samples were isolated from 113 fungal strains, which were classified into 43 genera on the basis of nucleotide sequences of molecular markers, especially ITS rDNA. In the artificial and natural environment of the human fish there are potentially dangerous fungi of the genera: Aspergillus, Candida, Cladosporium, Exophiala, Mucor and Saprolegnia, known as causative agents of diseases of amphibians. In the water samples, as well as on microbiological baits, the appearance of the same fungus species was observed, with the genus Mucor and Trichoderma predominant. The set of samples isolated from the surface of proteus were partially similar to those taken from the environment. However, the reproducibility of isolation of the same genera in the various animals was very small, and the fungal colonies appeared sporadically. We observed differences in the incidence of fungal species isolated from healthy and sick animals. With healthy animals, the most commonly occurring genera were Exophila and Cladosporium (three animals), and with sick animals Saprolegnia (2 animals). Candida species appeared with two healthy and one sick animal exclusively in captivity