| Summary: | Contrary to humans, candidiasis is a rare infection in animals. However, in reptiles, candidiasis can cause gastrointestinal, cutaneous, or rarely systemic infections in stressed animals. The infections due to <i>Yarrowia lipolytica</i> have been increasingly described in human medicine, and hundreds of cases are reported, comprised of granulomatous lung lesions. Herein, granulomatous pneumonia of a spectacled caiman, <i>Caiman crocodilus</i>, was described, and the presence of <i>Y. lipolytica</i> in the lesion was confirmed through histopathology, microbiologic cultures, and molecular methods. The cause of death of the spectacled caiman was ascribed to bacterial shock septicemia consequentially to a traumatic lesion. However, in the right lung, several nodules containing white exudate were evidenced. At mycological and molecular analyses, <i>Y. lipolytica</i> was evidenced, and the histological finding confirmed the presence of a <i>Candida</i> infection in the lung granulomatous lesions. The comparison of ITS sequences with 11 <i>Yarrowia</i> spp. isolates, recently described in green sea turtles, and with a human strain was conducted, and the whole genome of a strain isolated in the spectacled caiman was sequenced. Even though <i>Y. lipolytica</i> is considered a non-pathogenic yeast and has been rarely described in animals, it seems to cause granulomatous lesions in reptiles as in humans.
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