Photo: Michael Grace
A mass die-off of tens of thousands of bats in the U.S. Northeast is confounding researchers and worrying wildlife advocates. The phenomenon has been dubbed white nose syndrome since many of the dead and dying bats show a white fungus on their nose. However, the fungus itself is believed to be a secondary symptom; the primary cause is as yet unknown. Officials estimate that white nose syndrome has had a 50 to 90 percent mortality rate in those afflicted. "We've never seen anything like this before with our bats, much less any other mammals, with a very large regional die-off," said Susi von Oettingen of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Bat advocates aren't the only ones worried about the plummeting population. Farmers and others will likely miss the bats later this year since the disappearance of whole populations could mean a much larger number of insects. So far, the disease has been found in Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont, though biologists say it could easily spread to other regions.
source: The New York Times, The Canadian Press
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Comments View as Flat
caniscandida Posted 6:58 am
25 Mar 2008
fewer bats, more bugs
No surprise that the anthropocentric economic aspect receives due notice. ("Help! Bad news for our cotton crop!")
It is good, though, that some are saddened for other reasons.
Also, we shall need to pay attention now to the vertebrates who are eating the dead or dying bats. Raptors and raccoons were mentioned in the NYTimes article.
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Quinn Posted 7:32 am
25 Mar 2008
Spelunking
Bad news for spelunkers.
For those of you who are avid darkness lovers and cave aficionados, I'm sorry but you should probably hold off on your spelunking for a while. Whatever it is that's killing the bats, chances are that you help the spread of it when you crawl into an afflicted cave and get the microorganism's spores (or the microorganism itself) on your skin and clothes. Don't contaminate other caves. Hold off on spelunking until whatever it is that's killing the bats is discovered.
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caniscandida Posted 4:49 am
26 Mar 2008
talking with Charlie Rose
Charlie Rose interviewed both Tina Kelley, the NY Times reporter, and Elizabeth Buckles, the Cornell bat expert. They are clearly committed professionals, which is encouraging.
Buckles spoke of her life-long love of all wildlife. In response to Rose's question on the impact to ecosystems caused by a severe drop in numbers of bats, she did indeed refer to how human beings are most likely to be affected by the proliferation of insects, but usually there was an animal-related aspect. Regarding agriculture, not only is the issue of bugs eating plants important, but also there is the issue of bugs weakening farm animals. And in the context of the spread of certain diseases among humans, she mentioned West Nile virus especially, which has been much more dangerous to birds.
She is genuinely concerned for the bats themselves. She most fears a genetic bottleneck, through which a few bats from the affected species could survive, but with their genetic variety reduced, and able to restore their numbers only slowly.
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Wolverine Posted 5:09 am
26 Mar 2008
As The Old Commercial Said
It's not nice to fool Mother Nature! Humans are destroying the natural world in so many ways that the experts can't even determine the reason for the die-off.
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wiscidea Posted 8:43 am
26 Mar 2008
economics, spelunking, and funnels
"No surprise that the anthropocentric economic aspect receives due notice."
However much I believe that preserving nature just because it exists is a good enough reason for preserving it, I always appreciate recognition of economic benefits. Let's face it, there is an enormous segment of the human population that won't save anything unless they are personally affected by its loss. I'd like to see more economic arguments for the smallest creatures and supposedly most insignificant plants. I suspect there is always an economic argument for preserving a biological organism.
"Whatever it is that's killing the bats, chances are that you help the spread of it when you crawl into an afflicted cave and get the microorganism's spores (or the microorganism itself) on your skin and clothes. Don't contaminate other caves."
Very good point. The investigators should start here. It's like carrying diseases from island to island, lake to lake, et cetera. Is it too late, or should all levels of government consider greater restrictions on transfer of material from one relatively isolated and pristine environment to another? No more... travel around the world, see new species, and sow the seeds of their destruction (see post regarding Antarctica and tourists).
"She most fears a genetic bottleneck, through which a few bats from the affected species could survive, but with their genetic variety reduced, and able to restore their numbers only slowly."
How about this? Destruction of habitat, pressure from hunting, elimination of key species of animals and plants, fragmentation of ecosystems, and reductions of populations to "acceptable" though far below historic levels have created population funnels and no populations of species are going to come out the other side in sufficient numbers to have the genetic diversity to cope with new diseases and environmental change. That is, the disease in question affecting bats is not CREATING a bottleneck... it is the RESULT of a bottleneck and there just isn't enough diversity to muster a response?
Any wildlife ecologists out there who can weigh in on this?
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caniscandida Posted 1:46 pm
26 Mar 2008
caves, lakes and bromeliads
WiscIdea,
you might be interested in this recent contribution by the excellent evolutionary biologist Olivia Judson, on a very different and cheerier subject, but not altogether unrelated:
http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/pineapple-drea ....
It is not at all clear that the first bats who got the current ailment got it inside the caves, or abandoned mines, that they use as their hibernacula. But it is certainly a reasonable hypothesis that the ailment might be spread through the bats' close contact during hibernation. My feeling is that a number of bats picked up the pathogen prior to hibernation, and then it spread further within the hibernating population; and humans moving between caves would not be likely carriers of the pathogen. But, seeing that we know little or nothing so far, we cannot exclude any possibility, and must take every precaution.
Apparently the most deadly symptom is the loss of fat layers. What in the world could cause that? Unusual exertion, maybe shivering, from stress?
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MjrDzaster Posted 2:29 pm
26 Mar 2008
Dying Bats
An insect not common in the bats diet due to Global Warming may be a cause. Possibly an insect that migrated either north or south into those areas where the bats are most common. Maybe an insect that carries a pathogen which the bats have no immunity to. It's scary though to contemplate what could and most likely be coming our way due to our overpopulation problem which has been exploding for the last couple hundred years. The meek shall inherit the Earth, but they were here long before we even crawled out of the primordial ooz. Either way...it's sad, I love bats. And all creatures great and small.
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caniscandida Posted 3:38 pm
26 Mar 2008
other possibilities
That is a reasonable suspicion, MjrDzaster.
Here is the new page from Bat Conservation International:
http://batcon.org/news/news_item.asp?NewsID=346.
Note that the ill effects of behavior-altering and/or metabolism-altering chemicals are being scrutinized along with biological pathogens.
Note too that the Big Brown Bat, Eptesicus fuscus, which seems not to hibernate in large colonies, has not been affected. The two bats mentioned as being in worst trouble are both in genus Myotis ("having mouse-ears"?) : the Little Brown Myotis, M. lucifugus, "the bat most commonly seen in residential areas in the east" (from Kaufman's "Mammals of North America"); and the Indiana Myotis (aka Indiana Bat), M. sodalis, "listed as endangered throughout its range, best known for its tendency to hibernate in very dense congreations in cold caves with high humidity."
Note too, what is very interesting indeed, that some biologists have remarked on some similarities in the behavior of bats afflicted with White Nose Syndrome, and that of honeybees afflicted by their own recent plague, Colony Collapse Disorder.
As for the "primordial ooze": I love your quote from the Beatitudes, in the Sermon on the Mount, and I strongly trust that both you and Jesus of Nazareth are right on that point. But just to quibble a bit, the common ancestor of humans and bats lived long after most of the critters that we know and love had got out of that ooze and sponged themselves off.
In fact, amongst all mammals, bats and primates (us) seem to be very closely related taxa. We are probably more closely related to bats than to any other non-primate mammal.
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mtvyfan Posted 3:37 am
02 Apr 2008
First bees, now bats
How sad. I really enjoy bats. When I was living in Austin, TX (GO LONGHORNS!) it was a nightly event watching them zoom out from under an overpass and tourists would make pilgrimages to see them. They are extraordinary creatures.
I'm sure it will be discovered that mankind's destruction of the environment whether by the bats eating pesticide-laden insects, foul water and air, etc. will be the cause of their dying off.
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caniscandida Posted 5:23 am
02 Apr 2008
"pesticide-laden insects"
Yes, one class of leading suspects is pesticides. Specifically, investigators are looking into whether a new kind of pesticide was recently introduced, especially one that would be present in moths.
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