Amphibians will clearly benefit from the rapid identification of areas in which
B. salamandrivorans is present. We therefore designed diagnostic species-specific PCR primers to amplify the 5.8S ribosomal RNA gene and its flanking internal transcribed spacer regions: ITS1 and ITS2. Our set of primers STerF and STerR amplified B. salamandrivorans in all positive tissues examined. Importantly, these primers did not amplify any of the nine tested strains from all three B. dendrobatidis lineages known to infect Europe and therefore provide a rapid noninvasive method for detecting of B. salamandrivorans infections. Furthermore, by using the newly developed PCR primers, we were also able to detect B. salamandrivorans DNA in remains of the epidermises of six wild fire salamanders (from Bunderbos, The Netherlands) that were found dead in 2010 or 2011 and were stored at −70 °C. B. salamandrivorans was found present in skin
swabs from all five experimentally infected and moribund fire salamanders, but in none of the midwife toads and noninfected