Category Archives: bats

“A ray of hope” on WNS in bats

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Scott Darling

In Vermont, residents have reported seeing colonies of little brown bats. Over the last five years most of the state’s little brown bats had been wiped out by white nose syndrome (WNS). In Pennsylvania, an abandoned mine appears to have 2,000 healthy bats.

Read the Associated Press article here. (It’s the better story.)
Read the Washington Post article here.

More good news: The Center for Biodiversity reports that Congress has directed that $4 million from the endangered species recovery fund go towards white nose syndrome research. But Congress has allocated for WNS before, and then reneged. It will be truly good news when research actually gets funded.
The Center for Biodiversity press release.

Photo: Scott Darling, Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife, in the early days of the WNS crisis. Photo property of State Wildlife Research News. (Permission required for reuse.)

Year of the Bat continues

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In 2010 the United Nations declared 2011 and 2012 to be the Year of the Bat. (And yes, the UN almost always declares a special “year” that lasts two years.) The first year of the bat is almost over, but there is another whole year to come.

See the United Nations’ press release here.

Visit the Year of the Bat Web site here.

Get the news from Bat Conservation International here. 

One of the more surprising name checks of the international effort was in a piece on removing bats from your attic in Consumer Reports.

Geomyces Locked In As White Nose Cause

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A paper published on-line in the journal Nature on Wednesday dotted the scientific i’s and crossed the t’s on Geomyces destructans being the cause of white nose syndrome. Other experiments, and early news on this one, had established that white nose syndrome is caused by the fungus, but this is the official word.

During the conference call announcing the paper, several of the scientists said that the study was designed to satisfy Koch’s postulates, a term more familiar to medical researchers than wildlife researchers. The postulates map out a series of experiments that prove (or disprove) that an organism causes a disease.

Most of the time, researchers being forced to dance to Nature’s tune (or the tune of any other major scientific journal) is just part of the game of research science. This case, though, points out the inherent flaws in the system. White nose researchers have been starved for funding. Wildlife managers have been desperate for information. And while we can only hope that no wildlife manager was waiting around for confirmation from a peer-reviewed paper before taking action on white nose syndrome, I wonder if an earlier publication of this paper might have shaken a few extra pennies out of Congress’s pocket.

Read the abstract in Nature, or the whole article with a subscription or fee.

The findings are summarized in a brief article from Science News.

Photo: US Fish and Wildlife Service

Geomyces Locked In As White Nose Cause

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A paper published on-line in the journal Nature on Wednesday dotted the scientific i’s and crossed the t’s on Geomyces destructans being the cause of white nose syndrome. Other experiments, and early news on this one, had established that white nose syndrome is caused by the fungus, but this is the official word.

During the conference call announcing the paper, several of the scientists said that the study was designed to satisfy Koch’s postulates, a term more familiar to medical researchers than wildlife researchers. The postulates map out a series of experiments that prove (or disprove) that an organism causes a disease.

Most of the time, researchers being forced to dance to Nature’s tune (or the tune of any other major scientific journal) is just part of the game of research science. This case, though, points out the inherent flaws in the system. White nose researchers have been starved for funding. Wildlife managers have been desperate for information. And while we can only hope that no wildlife manager was waiting around for confirmation from a peer-reviewed paper before taking action on white nose syndrome, I wonder if an earlier publication of this paper might have shaken a few extra pennies out of Congress’s pocket.

Read the abstract in Nature, or the whole article with a subscription or fee.

The findings are summarized in a brief article from Science News.

Photo: US Fish and Wildlife Service

Wildlife Disease Roundup

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Dozens of white-tailed deer in Montana have died of a mysterious ailment which is suspected to be epizootic hemorrhagic disease. The Great Falls Tribune has a brief item. Check out this item on ProMed-mail for a helpful reference to the no-see-ums that transmit the disease.

[ADDITION: The day after this was posted, the state of New Jersey announced epizootic hemorrhagic disease in deer in that state. You can read the press release here.]

A feral hog in Midland County, Michigan has tested positive for pseudorabies. Read the article on Michigan Live, here. Sounds ridiculously scary until you find out that porcine pseudorabies has nothing to do with rabies. It’s a herpes virus, and it doesn’t effect humans, but it does kill dogs and other animals, wild and domestic. Once again, ProMed-mail has the needed explanation. Read it here.

Also in the catagory of “needed explanations” and “wildlife disease” is a recent report in the Los Angeles Times of the “first U.S. transmission” of rabies linked to a vampire bat. Uh, no. Even the article says the man was bitten by a vampire bat in Mexico, then traveled to the U.S. Unfortunately, the story was also picked up on the gossip site Gawker.com. Here’s the LA Times story. And here’s a debunking from a biology professor at Long Island University

Finally, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources recently launched a new Web site on chronic wasting disease, aimed at hunters. Find the Web site at http://www.knowcwd.com/ And find an article about the Web site and Wisconsin’s “Know CWD” campaign in the Houston Chronicle.

There were just no pretty pictures for this one. Not even a nice picture of a virus available.

White nose syndrome in Maine

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Bat survey in Maine cave.

The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife has received laboratory results confirming that white nose syndrome, a disease of bats, has been found in two sites in Oxford County. While the nearby states of Massachusetts and New Hampshire were among the first to report white nose syndrome in bats, until this winter, Maine bats had not tested positive for the syndrome.

The sites were white nose syndrome was found are two of only a few bat hibernation sites in the state.

For more information, read the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife press release. Also, this story from the Maine Public Broadcasting Network.

Photo credit: Jonathan Mays, Wildlife Biologist, Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife

State Wildlife Biologists Wanted for Bat Survey

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Mobile bat detector
A coalition of federal and state agencies is looking for wildlife biologists to lead and organize acoustic surveys of bats in all 50 states. (Actually, the program has at least some data from 24 states, but only New York is thoroughly covered, so more leaders are needed just about everywhere else.)

The coalition hopes to gather general population data on bats, particularly as these animals face two threats: white nose syndrome, and wind power development. Surveys specific to the sites of those threats don’t give needed information about bat population trends in general.

The survey protocol uses your real-time recording bat detector (such as those from Anabat or Binary Acoustic Technology) mounted to the roof of a car (with materials available cheaply from home improvement stores). The trickiest part may be planning the transect, which should be 20 to 30 miles long, and driven at very close to 20 mph. If it is a loop, it should be wide enough so that you are unlikely to encounter the same bat twice. The surveys should take place at sunset, on evenings that are over 50 degrees F, with low wind, and no rain.

Organizing a statewide survey is easy, say the organizers. New York covers the entire state with 80 volunteers and one coordinator. They cover 50 transects, two or three times a year.

Finding the citizen volunteers has been easy, but finding qualified wildlife biologists to lead state programs has been more difficult. Susi von Oettingen, of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, said in her presentation on the survey project at the Northeastern Fish and Wildlife Conference last month that state wildlife biologists are the ideal leaders.

Free training materials are available to leaders. For more information on the project, and how to get involved as a leader, visit the project’s Web site, which includes a video of a presentation of the project, plus a PowerPoint presentation.

Photo: Courtesy New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the bat survey coalition

State Wildlife Biologists Wanted for Bat Survey

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2
Mobile bat detector
A coalition of federal and state agencies is looking for wildlife biologists to lead and organize acoustic surveys of bats in all 50 states. (Actually, the program has at least some data from 24 states, but only New York is thoroughly covered, so more leaders are needed just about everywhere else.)

The coalition hopes to gather general population data on bats, particularly as these animals face two threats: white nose syndrome, and wind power development. Surveys specific to the sites of those threats don’t give needed information about bat population trends in general.

The survey protocol uses your real-time recording bat detector (such as those from Anabat or Binary Acoustic Technology) mounted to the roof of a car (with materials available cheaply from home improvement stores). The trickiest part may be planning the transect, which should be 20 to 30 miles long, and driven at very close to 20 mph. If it is a loop, it should be wide enough so that you are unlikely to encounter the same bat twice. The surveys should take place at sunset, on evenings that are over 50 degrees F, with low wind, and no rain.

Organizing a statewide survey is easy, say the organizers. New York covers the entire state with 80 volunteers and one coordinator. They cover 50 transects, two or three times a year.

Finding the citizen volunteers has been easy, but finding qualified wildlife biologists to lead state programs has been more difficult. Susi von Oettingen, of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, said in her presentation on the survey project at the Northeastern Fish and Wildlife Conference last month that state wildlife biologists are the ideal leaders.

Free training materials are available to leaders. For more information on the project, and how to get involved as a leader, visit the project’s Web site, which includes a video of a presentation of the project, plus a PowerPoint presentation.

Photo: Courtesy New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the bat survey coalition

White nose syndrome in Nova Scotia

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White nose syndrome has been found in Nova Scotia, the fourth Canadian province to be stricken with the bat disease. The syndrome was detected in a bat found flying in daylight on March 23 in the town of Brooklyn, in Hant County. White nose syndrome had been previously found in Canada in Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick.

Alison Whitlock, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Northeast white nose syndrome coordinator mentioned the news during her presentation on the white nose syndrome national plan at the Northeast Fish & Wildlife Conference yesterday.

Find out more from the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources press release here. News stories appeared in The Global Saskatoon, The Canadian Press, and Halifax News Net.

White nose syndrome in Nova Scotia

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White nose syndrome has been found in Nova Scotia, the fourth Canadian province to be stricken with the bat disease. The syndrome was detected in a bat found flying in daylight on March 23 in the town of Brooklyn, in Hant County. White nose syndrome had been previously found in Canada in Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick.

Alison Whitlock, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Northeast white nose syndrome coordinator mentioned the news during her presentation on the white nose syndrome national plan at the Northeast Fish & Wildlife Conference yesterday.

Find out more from the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources press release here. News stories appeared in The Global Saskatoon, The Canadian Press, and Halifax News Net.