DocWatch: White Nose Syndrome The decline of bats, a keystone species.
A mysterious malady has been causing bats to starve to death, waking them midwinter, hungry and thirsty. They then fly out into a wintry wilderness where there are no insects to gorge on. First discovered in 2006, the malady, named "white nose syndrome" because of the possibly opportunistic fungus that grows around the bats' nose, usually wipes out 90% of the bats in a hibernium. Suspected culprits include pesticides and other toxins (laden upon the insects they eat), and disrupted weather patterns (affecting insect availability late in the year). Surprisingly to the 'Docs, very little baseline data are known about hibernating bats, making analysis difficult. But the bat specialists are despairing, even as they race to try to understand.
Fri, Jan 22, 2010 from Chambersburg PublicOpinion: Bats dying from white nose syndrome; means trouble for farmers Biologist Jim Hart said a devastated bat population will cost farmers and impact water quality.
Bats sometimes eat their own weight in insects in a single day. That's about 2,000 mosquito-sized bugs.
"They are worth their weight in gold," said Hart, a mammalogist with the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. "They take an enormous toll on agricultural pests. If they all disappear, that's going to be a pretty bad scenario."
Birds won't immediately eat all of the extra bugs, according to Hart. Populations of farm pests will increase quickly and farmers will respond by applying more pesticides, some of which will find their way to streams.... Wildlife biologists estimate that the disorder has killed 750,000 bats in the Northeast since it was first discovered in 2006 in New York. An estimated one million bats overwinter in hundreds of hibernacula across Pennsylvania.
Science is ill-prepared for the crisis.
"In general, we don't know enough about normal bats to know what's different in sick bats," Reeder said....
"The loss of one species is a big deal," Hart said. "The loss of a whole suite of species is a catastrophe. It scares biologists."
They joke about taking up a career that has a future, like computer science. ...
Thu, Jan 14, 2010 from PhillyBurbs.com: Scientist: Bucks County's bats will be dead by the spring White-Nose Syndrome, a mysterious disease that is killing off bat populations up and down the Northeast, has finally hit the Durham bat mine.
Although state scientists are trying a new, experimental treatment for the disease, commission biologist Greg Turner says it's most likely too late and too little to save the 8,000 to 10,000 little brown bats and other species of bats, which hibernate deep inside an abandoned iron mine tucked into a hillside in Durham.
Reports that bats across the Delaware River, in New Jersey, were being affected, brought game commission officials last week to the Durham mine, the second-largest hibernaculum in Pennsylvania.
"Right now, the Durham mine is affected," said Turner, an endangered mammal specialist. "About two-thirds of the bats we had handled all had the fungus on them already."
He estimates that 80 to 90 percent of Durham's bats will be dead by April, the month when healthy bats emerge from hibernation and begin mating season. ...
Thu, Jan 7, 2010 from Yale 360: Behind Mass Die-Offs, Pesticides Lurk as Culprit Today, drips and puffs of pesticides surround us everywhere, contaminating 90 percent of the nation's major rivers and streams, more than 80 percent of sampled fish, and one-third of the nation's aquifers. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, fish and birds that unsuspectingly expose themselves to this chemical soup die by the millions every year.
But as regulators grapple with the lethal dangers of pesticides, scientists are discovering that even seemingly benign, low-level exposures to pesticides can affect wild creatures in subtle, unexpected ways -- and could even be contributing to a rash of new epidemics pushing species to the brink of extinction.
In the past dozen years, no fewer than three never-before-seen diseases have decimated populations of amphibians, bees, and -- most recently -- bats. A growing body of evidence indicates that pesticide exposure may be playing an important role in the decline of the first two species, and scientists are investigating whether such exposures may be involved in the deaths of more than 1 million bats in the northeastern United States over the past several years. ...
Thu, Dec 17, 2009 from Burlington Free Press: Northeast bat toll hits 90 percent Only 10 percent of the Northeast's cave-dwelling bats have survived the massive die-offs associated with a powdery white fungal infection... On Oct. 26, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced six grants totaling $800,000 to support white-nose-syndrome prevention, eradication and decontamination projects.
More than 40 research proposals, with a cumulative price tag of $4.8 million, were submitted, the service reported.
Three days later, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., announced a $1.9 million appropriation to fund research into causes of and treatments for white-nose syndrome... A rise in mosquitoes and mosquito-borne illnesses might raise the alert level, he said; as would increased insect damage to fruits and vegetables. ...
If we thought of bats as mosquito repellent, maybe there'd be more research money.
Wed, Oct 28, 2009 from Bergen County Record: Bergen bat count down 58 percent The bat population was down 58 percent in Bergen County this summer, according to new research that reinforces fears that many of the state's bats were wiped out last winter by a fungus linked to the deaths of a million bats in nine states.
The summer bat count showed population down an average of 30 percent at 40 summer roost sites in nine counties, mostly in North Jersey. Of the 23 sites that showed a noticeable decrease in bat population, some roosts were entirely empty, said MacKenzie Hall... ...
Sun, Oct 11, 2009 from Glen Falls Post-Star (NY): Mystery in the darkness The cave near the western shore of Lake George in the town of Hague has long been one of the biggest winter homes to little brown bats in North America.
A count of bats in the mid-1990s led to the conclusion that 185,000 of the tiny mammals hibernated there, and state wildlife officials believe that number likely topped 200,000 a few years later.
Last winter, when biologists from the state Department of Environmental Conservation visited the cave, they concluded there were somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 left, said Alan Hicks, a DEC wildlife biologist.
Another cave near Paradox Lake in Essex County has been similarly devastated by a mysterious disease that kills the bats as they hibernate during the winter.
"There's not a (bat) population in the Adirondacks that hasn't been affected," said Alan Hicks, a DEC wildlife biologist who is heading the state's efforts to investigate. "I’m not looking forward to this winter." ...
Hope those 2000-3,000 left are ornery survivors. And routinely bear twins.
Sun, Sep 27, 2009 from The Journal-News, Martinburg, WV: Southern bats now dying from white-nose fungus "In some hibernaculum, 90 to 100 percent of the bats are dying," a Fish and Wildlife Service Web site reads.
In a cave advisory issued earlier this year, federal officials said it has not only "killed hundreds of thousands" of bats in northeastern states, but it threatens to spread to the Midwest and Southeast -- home to many federally endangered bat species, as well as one of the largest bat populations in the country.... Once bats become infected, it interferes with their hibernation patterns, Bennett said.
"Bats normally wake up five, six or seven times during their hibernation, when they'll preen a little bit and then go back to sleep. But this fungus itches them, so they wake up constantly and scratch till they use up their fat reserve. So they wake up in the middle of winter and they're hungry. They have to eat to survive, so they fly out of the cave," he said. White-nose syndrome was discovered by cavers in West Virginia this past summer in Pendleton County, Bennett said.
Shortly afterward, it was discovered in Bath County, Va., he said.... "But the other caves they found it in were popular caves, so this is why they are thinking that humans may be helping to spread it," he said. ...
Just another of our surplus species. Y'know, we ownmillions of 'em.
Mon, Sep 14, 2009 from Seattle Times: Bat experts watch health of Northwest colonies "We don't expect it to be here already," Ormsbee said. "But we need to start doing surveillance early."
More than 1 million bats already have perished in what one expert described as the most precipitous decline in American wildlife in recorded history. Extinctions are likely if the white-nose disease continues to spread, and could lead to a population explosion of mosquitoes and other insect pests normally held in check by the winged predators.... First discovered in 2006 in a popular tourist cave in New York state, white-nose syndrome has spread to hundreds of sites in nine states. Marked by a powdery, white fungus on the bats' noses and wings, the infection can kill 95 percent or more of hibernating animals in a cave.
"When I talk to colleagues back East, they tell me they go into these caves and they cry," said Greg Falxa, a bat biologist with Cascadia Research Collective in Olympia. "They can't walk without stepping on dead bats."... ...
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's the ghost of the bats of yesteryear.
Fri, Aug 28, 2009 from Desdemona Despair: Northeast bat extinctions looming, with 1.5 Million Dead -- white-nose disease to reach U.S. West by 2012 Mounting evidence that several species of bats have been all but eliminated from the Northeast due to a new disease known as white-nose syndrome prompted a conservation group to send a letter today to Sam Hamilton, the new director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, urging that action on the bat epidemic be his first priority.... hite-nose syndrome - so named because of the fungal growth around bats' muzzles - has spread to nine states and killed an estimated 1.5 million bats. Bats from New England to West Virginia are now affected by the illness, and scientists fear that this coming winter the syndrome will show up in Kentucky and Tennessee, where some of the largest bat colonies in the world are located.
"Scientists are saying this disease could be on the West Coast in two to three years, at the rate it is spreading," said Mollie Matteson, a wildlife biologist and conservation advocate for the Center in its Richmond, Vermont office. "Some scientists are even warning that under a worst-case scenario, we may lose all bats in North America. Such a tragedy could have disastrous consequences for agriculture and ecosystems because of the role of bats in insect control and pollination." ...
Sat, Aug 8, 2009 from Concord Monitor: The effects of white-nose on bats Biologists are watching the state's bat population this summer, looking for the fallout of white-nose syndrome, a little-understood illness that has killed thousands of hibernating bats in the Northeast and was found to have reached New Hampshire in January... In Vermont's largest hibernating colony, Mt. Aeolus, where tens of thousands of bats have been documented, scientists found the floor of the cave littered with carcasses. Thousands were dead.... In the meantime, scientists will keep chipping away at the many questions that remain. They aren't sure if the white fungus is what's responsible for killing the bats or if it's a byproduct of another culprit.
"Is it a virus?" Brunkhurst said. "Is it a bacteria? It is some kind of contaminant?"
And what will the fallout be for the bats that make it through the winter? One Westmoreland colony was between 200 and 300 bats strong. In July, someone watching the colony reported that just a few bats remain.
...
Wed, Jul 22, 2009 from Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette: Mosquitoes 1, Bats 0 Already on the list of endangered species, the Indiana bat is one of the six species of bats threatened by the deadly syndrome that has killed hundreds of thousands of bats in the Northeastern states. And while some may find it difficult to muster sympathy over the demise of "sky rats," they should be concerned.
Bats serve the beneficial purpose of acting as nature's insecticide.
If the bats die off, insect populations will skyrocket and decimate food crops. Farmers will be forced to increase the use of pesticides leading to an increase in agricultural pollution. The demise of bats means less money in farmers' pockets, less food and more environmental pollution.... According to Parham, one bat can eat between 600 and 1,000 mosquitoes and other insect pests in just one hour. ...
If only they were sky rats, they'd be able to reproduce faster than one pup per year.
Tue, Jun 2, 2009 from House Resources Committe,: Congress takes up bat-killing 'white nose' syndrome The House Natural Resources Committee, Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands, led by Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), and Subcommittee on Insular Affairs, Oceans and Wildlife, led by Del. Madeleine Z. Bordallo (D-GU), will hold a joint oversight hearing on "White-Nose Syndrome: What's Killing Bats in the Northeast?"
...
Fri, May 22, 2009 from Center for Biological Diversity: Massive Effort Needed to Save Bat Species From Extinction The Center for Biological Diversity and 60 other national and regional organizations sent a letter today to members of Congress requesting increased funding for research on white-nose syndrome, a disease that has been devastating bat populations in the eastern United States over the past two years. Scientists are predicting that if current trends continue, several species of bat may be extinct in just a few years. The cause of the illness has not been definitively identified, and no cure is known.
Bats are crucial insect eaters and pollinators whose loss could leave devastating gaps in ecosystems and profoundly disrupt the food chain.
The letter was signed by scientists, farmers, and conservation, wildlife, sustainable farming, and anti-pesticide organizations. Biologists predict that the widespread loss of insect-eating bats will lead to burgeoning bug populations, including those that attack crops. Increased use of pesticides on farms may result from the bat die-off. ...
Sun, May 3, 2009 from New York Times: As Bats Die, Closing Caves to Control a Fungus The federal Forest Service is preparing to close thousands of caves and former mines in national forests in 33 states in an effort to control a fungus that has already killed an estimated 500,000 bats.
A Forest Service biologist, Becky Ewing, said an emergency order was issued last week for caves in 20 states from Minnesota to Maine. A second order covering the Forest Service’s 13-state Southern region should be issued this month.
The sites will be closed for up to a year, Ms. Ewing said.... Bats play a important role in keeping insects like mosquitoes under control. Bats eat from April to October, usually consuming their body weight in bugs each night. Ms. Ewing said the loss of 500,000 bats meant 2.4 million pounds of bugs not eaten in a year. ...
I'm afraid this is closing the bat-barn doors after the bat-cows have fled.
Sun, Apr 26, 2009 from Daily News Record (VA): Endless Caverns Bats Suspect Samples of bats found in the Endless Caverns show cave and suspected of having the deadly white-nose syndrome have been sent to a federal testing facility, the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries confirmed Friday.
If the tests come back positive, it will be the first confirmed case in Rockingham County of the mysterious disease that has wiped out hundreds of thousands of bats in the Northeast. The disease showed up in Virginia for the first time earlier this year, but until now, no bats in the central Valley had been suspected of having the illness.... The disease has wiped out 75 to 90 percent of the bat population in New York and more than 400,000 bats in the region, records show.
Reduced bat populations could be detrimental for many reasons, including the fact that bats eat many insects, such as cucumber beetles and corn borer moths, which can ruin crops. ...
If it's reached the Endless Caverns... where will it end?
Tue, Apr 7, 2009 from Boston Globe: Sick bats' PR problem could prove to be deadly To a public raised on vampire movies, bats are loathsome, frightening creatures - blind, flying rodents that all carry rabies, suck human blood, and get impossibly tangled in long hair. None of it is true. But scientists trying to drum up a public outcry - and government funding - to stop a mysterious illness ravaging bat populations from Vermont to Virginia believe these myths are thwarting their efforts. The researchers say they are learning a harsh truth about the public's desire to save animals: Cuteness rules.
...
Then it's time to lose the PSAs starring a blood-stained Dracula!
Wed, Mar 18, 2009 from Hartford Courant: Fungus Kills About 90 Percent Of Connecticut's Bats White-nose syndrome, the mysterious plague that is decimating the Northeast's bats, killed off about 90 percent of Connecticut's bats over the winter and is now galloping across the country so quickly that it threatens the nation's -- and probably the world's -- largest bat populations in the American South.... Dickson's team of wildlife experts found thousands of dead bats floating like dead fish in standing water, or stacked on top of each other along the flat ledges of the cave walls.
"It was grim, and you don't have to be a scientist to realize the implications for the environment inside those caves," said Dickson. "This is a massive, unprecedented die-off, with significant potential impacts on nature, especially insect control." ... Dickson said Tuesday that the disease has hit hard among little brown bats and northern long-eared bats, which are the ones most commonly seen in Connecticut, but that it has spread to other species as well.... Even if the cause of white-nose syndrome is identified soon, the damage to the bat population has already been substantial.
"This is a species that reproduces very slowly and that lives very long for the wildlife world -- many bats survive for 30 years," Dickson said.
...
I'm so glad that we had nothing to do with this. Right?
Thu, Feb 26, 2009 from Charleston Gazette: White-nose disease confirmed in Pendleton bats CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Bats in Pendleton County have white-nose syndrome, a condition associated with the death of more than 100,000 hibernating bats in the Northeast, a laboratory has confirmed.... West Virginia caves provide some of the nation's most important hibernation sites for endangered Virginia big-eared bats and Indiana bats, as well as for a variety of more abundant bat species.
A cold-loving fungus not previously scientifically described has been linked to white nose syndrome, which was first observed in bat hibernation sites near Albany, N.Y., in 2006. Since then, the syndrome has spread to caves and abandoned mines in Connecticut, Vermont, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and West Virginia, and is suspected to be present in New Hampshire.... "The void in the night skies created by the absence of thousands of bats could affect all West Virginians, because bats prey on a variety of insect pests." ...
Tue, Feb 17, 2009 from Rutland Herald: VT Residents Warned about Bats and White Nose Syndrome WATERBURY -- The Vermont Agency of Natural Resource's Fish & Wildlife Department recently issued a reminder to residents who live near caves and mines to expect unusual levels of bat activity as a result of the White Nose Syndrome that is afflicting hibernating bats.
Reports of sick bats have been coming in most recently from Norwich, Thetford and Strafford, near the Elizabeth Mine, where thousands of bats hibernate each winter.
Some people are finding dead bats on their porches or screen windows, some have bats entering their homes and some are seeing bats flying during the day.
"One of the symptoms of White Nose Syndrome is that bats are extremely emaciated, and many are awakening early and flying out of the cave in search of food," said State Wildlife Biologist Scott Darling. ...
Beware: once again the flapping dead are on the move.
Mon, Feb 9, 2009 from Wilkes-Barre Times-Leader: As bat deaths rise, mosquito invasion looms Here's a prediction: We will see more mosquitoes this summer. Why?
Because something is killing bats. Wiping out entire populations of the insect-eating mammals, and nobody knows why or how to stop it.
Considering a single little brown bat can eat more than 2,000 mosquitoes in a night, and factoring in that bats in our area are starting to perish just like bats in New York and New England did, one of our top insect predators might be absent from the evening sky this summer.
Last week the Pennsylvania Game Commission discovered dead bats in two mine sites in Lackawanna County.... Something is causing the thousands of bats to use up their winter energy reserves early.
As a result, the bats are emerging from hibernation six weeks early and flying out of the mines in search of insects. The problem is there aren't any bugs in February, and the bats are literally starving to death in mid-air. ...
With their high-frequency screams sending out "eek eek eek ek ek ek eek eek eek" ...
Thu, Feb 5, 2009 from WV Public Radio: White nose syndrome suspected in WV bats "On the way to the caves we found five dead bats along the trail, which is unusual," West said. "In the one cave, New Trout, we saw no evidence whatsoever of White Nose Syndrome. In Trout Cave we found two bats that had some fungal growth."... "As the counters proceeded to the rear of the cave, they observed that roughly a quarter of the bats they were counting, and they counted over 400 that day, roughly a quarter that they could examine were displaying a fungal growth that resembled White Nose," West said.
When the group left the cave at twilight, a number of bats were leaving the cave presumably in search of food, which they normally don't do in the cold months when there are no bugs to eat.
Bats with White Nose Syndrome eventually starve to death. ...
I thought this was only happening in the Northeast. Is West Virginia now in the Northeast?
Thu, Jan 29, 2009 from Daily Record (NJ): Bat plague fallout: More bugs, fewer crops? The potential environmental impact of White Nose Syndrome, recently diagnosed for the first time in New Jersey in the Rockaway Township area, likely would be significant according to bat experts and advocates.
"It's one of those experiments you never want to find the results of," said Merlin Tuttle, an internationally-known bat expert and founder of Bat Conservation International in Austin, Texas.
Since bats feed on insects, fewer bats would mean more mosquitoes. That could result in additional cases of West Nile Virus, which is transmitted by mosquitoes, in humans.... He said that Texas, for example, has a cave with 20 million bats credited with devouring 200 tons of insects per night.
"You could only imagine what the impact could be on crops," Tuttle said.
"Just like birds by day, bats have a huge impact in keeping the insect population in balance -- including some of the worst crop and back-yard pests," Tuttle said. ...
Sat, Jan 24, 2009 from Sunbury Daily Item (PA): Disease shows up in area bat colony LEWISBURG, PA -- A week before Christmas, DeeAnn Reeder and her colleague Greg Turner made a discovery in a cave in Mifflin County. A handful of bats hibernating for winter had the tell-tale sign of white-nose syndrome, a mysterious condition killing off colonies in the northeast.
The discovery of the white fungus confirmed what state, federal and academic researchers have suspected would happen: White-nose syndrome has arrived in Pennsylvania after being detected in New York and Vermont.... About 600 bats in Pennsylvania, New York, Michigan, Vermont, Kentucky and possibly New Hampshire and West Virginia were tagged with transmitters that collect body temperature readings during hibernation. Data collection is ongoing, with results due in several months.
Preliminary results show the bats are warming up, or temporarily coming out of hibernation, more frequently than normal. "It looks like before they die, they are warming up even more frequently, and some are dying as they warm up," she said. ...
Thu, Jan 8, 2009 from Bennington Banner: Bats with White Nose Syndrome appearing in area Dorset and Strafford area residents have reported bat sightings in recent weeks, when the nocturnal flyers are supposed to be hibernating. The unusual behavior is being caused by White Nose Syndrome, a mysterious affliction that is devastating bat populations in the Northeast, according to Scott Darling, a bat biologist with the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department.... Darling said this year could be worst than last. "It's pretty discouraging," he said. "The bats came into winter in pretty bad shape." ...
We were hoping we could put these bat stories to bed all winter.
Mon, Nov 17, 2008 from Telegraph.co.uk: The animals and plants we cannot live without -- five experts Nearly 17,000 species are now considered to be threatened with extinction and 869 species are classed as extinct or extinct in the wild on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List. In the last year alone 183 species became more endangered.
Now, in the face of the growing threat posed by environmental changes around the globe, five leading scientists are to argue whether there is a single type of plant or animal which the planet really cannot afford to lose.
The debate, titled Irreplaceable -- The World's Most Invaluable Species, will see five experts present the case for the world's most important animals and plants from a shortlist of five: primates, bats, bees, fungi and plankton. ...
Fri, Oct 31, 2008 from Los Angeles Times: Die-off of bats is linked to new fungus Researchers have found a clue in the mysterious die-off of bats that has struck the Northeast -- a new fungus that so far seems to be present only in bats and in caves where the die-off has occurred. "The fungus is in some way involved in causing the bats to starve to death," said biologist Thomas Tomasi of Missouri State University in Springfield. "They are burning up too many calories, at a rate faster than they can sustain." ...
Hey, maybe a little bit of that fungus could help me get rid of this beer belly!
Fri, Sep 26, 2008 from SeaCoastOnline (Maine): Where have all the bats gone? Sitting outside as the sun set and the yard sank into shadow, I saw the swallows replaced by bats. There were usually at least 10 or 20 bats living in the old carriage house next to my driveway. I could hear their clicking squeaks both during the day as they rested under the shingles and at night while darting overhead after mosquitoes. This summer, the evening sky in my neighborhood has had a marked absence of bats. ... Growing evidence indicates that the fungus isn't the cause of death, but a symptom of something bigger: climate change, an unknown pathogen, or perhaps the increased pesticide use in the Northeast following the upswing in West Nile disease. ...
"Gone to heaven, every one when will we ever learn, when will we ever learn?"
Mon, Aug 25, 2008 from Cell Press, via EurekAlert: Why wind turbines can mean death for bats Ninety percent of the bats they examined after death showed signs of internal hemorrhaging consistent with trauma from the sudden drop in air pressure (a condition known as barotrauma) at turbine blades. Only about half of the bats showed any evidence of direct contact with the blades.... All three species of migratory bats killed by wind turbines fly at night, eating thousands of insects—including many crop pests—per day as they go. Therefore, bat losses in one area could have very real effects on ecosystems miles away, along the bats' migration routes. ...
So the turbines suck the life out of them. Sucks indeed.
Sat, Aug 9, 2008 from New York Times: As Bat Population Falls, the Questions Multiply No one knows the extent of the syndrome yet. "We've received an increasing number of calls from people in northwestern Connecticut saying bats have not returned to their summer homes," Ms. Dickson said.... A nursing little brown bat can consume about 1,200 insects a night, more than half its body weight.... Bats play a critical role in the welfare of the conservancy's exotic waterfowl species by reducing the number of insects carrying potentially harmful viruses. ...
Mon, Jul 28, 2008 from Boston Globe: Wing damage: bats in peril Researchers now think that a fuzzy white fungus found on thousands of dead and dying bats in New England and New York last winter might be the primary cause of the illness. Scientists have learned that the unidentified fungus seems to thrive in the cold temperatures found in caves and mines in winter -- when bats are hibernating and most vulnerable. As worrisome is that many bats continued to die this spring, dashing hopes that they would recuperate when they emerged from hibernation and resumed feeding. Hundreds of animals with scarred wings, both dead and alive, were discovered in Vermont, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire through June. ...
On a wing and a prayer: Their damaged wings, our prayers.
Tue, Jul 15, 2008 from Scranton Times-Tribune (PA): Biologists driven batty Tens of thousands of bats in New York and New England died of a mysterious disease over the winter and experts are now keeping a close eye on Pennsylvania's winged mammals.... "Bats have been here for 60 million years, so they obviously perform some important function in the ecosystem," [Dr. Kwiecinski ] said, as he sat in his office, surrounded by real bats, toy bats and pictures of bats. "Never seen anything like this in bats," he said.
...
Maybe after 60 million years, they're just tired of performing their function.
Wed, Jun 11, 2008 from Watertown Daily Times: Wind projects held up by 'white nose syndrome' bat concerns The proposed 62-turbine wind farm in Clayton, as well as the proposed 65-turbine St. Lawrence and 140-turbine Cape Vincent wind farms in Cape Vincent, may be affected by the thousands of Indiana bats that have died because of "white nose syndrome".... [T]he company is waiting on Horse Creek while the impact of white nose syndrome on bats is understood. Indiana bats are on federal and state endangered species lists. ...
Ouch -- extinction is more complicated than we thought.
Thu, Apr 3, 2008 from Litchfield County Times (CT): Bat die-off now found in Connecticut Dr. Davis said that there is little data available on bats, which is making it difficult for scientists to determine cause and effect. "They don't normally do bat surveys every year in every cave," he said, "mainly because when you go in, you wake them up and they burn up fat with nothing to eat. This syndrome could have started earlier than two years ago -- we just don't know. The real problem is there are no in-depth studies of bat biology. There are several labs working as hard as they can and they find parasites, they find bacteria on the fur or skin -- but no one knows if this is normal because there is no data on a healthy population. We haven't found any toxins; we haven't found any smoking gun. Everything is so inter-connected. There are so many different elements that could be attributed to something else. No one knows for sure." ...
Everything is so inter-connected, indeed: it'll be a banner season for mosquitos, moths and their larval caterpillars, flies, and so much more. Not a lot of bees, though...
Sat, Mar 22, 2008 from US Fish and Wildlife Service: White-Nose Syndrome in Bats (video)
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service endangered species biologist Susi von Oettingen talks about white-nose syndrome in bats and investigates a hibernaculum in an abandoned mine and the area around it. ...
Wed, Mar 19, 2008 from The Adirondack Daily Enterprise: Bat die-off is serious Of the nearly 20 caves and mines that state Department of Environmental Conservation biologist Al Hicks is aware of the DEC surveying this winter, all but three had bats with white-nose syndrome in them, he said. That breaks down to about 400,000 bats affected.
"It's almost everything we have," Hicks said. "It's about as bad as we can get."
The mortality rate of bats with white-nose syndrome is 90 to 97 percent, Hicks said.... "a progression that is much faster than expected..." Darling estimated that, if half a million bats died, "that would add up to two billion insects per night that would not get eaten." ...
Break out the DEET and protect your woolens. That's serious buggage.
Tue, Mar 11, 2008 from iBerkshires (MA): Bat die-off now found in Western Mass. After receiving reports last month from Vermont and New York about large numbers of bats dying in caves, biologists from the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service investigated caves and mines in the region where colonies of bats are known to spend the winter.
They found bats flying outside of one of the state's largest mines in Chester when they should have been hibernating, and found dead bats near the entrance that were collected for further study. ...
Wed, Mar 5, 2008 from Star-Ledger (NJ): Bats continue to de-hibernate and starve to death "Last year, when we first found this, we lost up to 18,000 bats. This year we're talking about [losing] 400,000. We've found problems in almost every cave in [NY] state, with one exception in Syracuse," said Hicks, the mammal specialist for the New York Endangered Species Unit. ...
Spring can't come soon enough. (Wait, maybe that's not so ideal...)
Sun, Feb 24, 2008 from Republican-American (CT): Disease killing brown bats across the region... CT? A mysterious disease has killed hibernating bats in New York and Vermont, is spreading into Massachusetts, and may already be in Connecticut.... Biologists have now identified sick bats in Chester, Mass., 40 miles north of Connecticut's Barkhamsted Reservoir, and will be looking for them here in March. ...
Not just in NY and VT and parts of MA. Now possibly in CT. Maybe also in SOL.
Thu, Feb 21, 2008 from The Boston Globe: Bat sickness reaches mines in Western Massachusetts "A mysterious and deadly sickness that has killed off thousands of bats in New York has now been discovered in two Western Massachusetts mines. Researchers say they expect to find more affected wintering bat populations as they lead expeditions into dark caves and mines in the Northeast over coming weeks. They predict that hundreds of thousands of the furry creatures will be wiped out before the end of winter. The illness ... does not appear to pose any risk to people... ...
What part of interconnectedness does this writer and these researchers not understand. The loss of any species poses a "risk" to all other species.
Wed, Feb 20, 2008 from AP, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Bats in NY, VT dying from mysterious malady In New York, Hicks cautioned in a report that he and his colleagues were "one survey short of saying that every substantial collection of wintering bats in the state is infected."
"If you are not worried, you should be," his report said. "The two sites infected last year that have been surveyed so far this winter have experienced a 90 percent and 97 percent drop in populations since this began, with most of the survivors currently in poor health." Worse, said Hicks, nobody knows the cause. "We don't know what the problem is. All we can do is just sit back and watch them die." ...
Bats have only one pup per year. Recovery, if possible, will be very slow. Perhaps a new species should be used for the cliche "canary in a coal mine"?
Sat, Feb 9, 2008 from National Geographic: Warming Creating Extinction Risks for Hibernators "When researchers at the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab in Crested Butte, Colorado, started documenting marmot hibernation patterns in the 1970s, the animals rarely awoke before the third week of May...These abbreviated hibernations are part of a growing body of evidence suggesting that hibernating animals are waking up earlier -- or not going to sleep at all -- due to rising temperatures from global warming. From chipmunks and squirrels in the Rocky Mountains to brown bears in Spain, these altered slumber patterns are putting animals at risk both of starvation and increased predation, researchers say -- which could bring many species to the brink of extinction." ...
For poor Yogi it may be over when it's over sooner rather than later.
