White-nose syndrome has killed 6 million bats in North America since 2006. Now a University of Winnipeg biologist has designed an ingenious way to help the flying mammals survive this deadly, skin-penetrating fungus that eats away at them as they hibernate.
Kaleigh Norquay, who works at the Craig Willis Bat Lab, is installing 20 heated boxes across Ontario, Canada to help protect the bats.
According to the biologist, white-nose syndrome loves the cold, leading the bats to warm up every two or three days to fight the condition eating into their wing tissue. The heated bat boxes - kept at 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) and using a heating coil similar to one employed in terrariums for lizards - are intended to serve as their warm home during their recovery.
Norquay warns that the syndrome can be particularly worrisome for pregnant bats.
"The females often have to spend so much energy, just recovering their own illness, that they are not able to maintain a pregnancy," she explains in a CBC News report, hoping for the boxes to provide a comfortable climate for the bats to stay pregnant and nurture their young in.
As a way to measure the success of the project, which is funded by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry in Ontario, Norquay will add drop sheets underneath the heated boxes in order to collect bat droppings. The fecal samples will then be analyzed for cortisol levels and to show how stressed the animals are.
This June and July, she will also microchip the bats in the colonies and add a box detector to gauge usage rate. The difference in colony count before and after the bats gave birth will inform her of how many babies made it.
White-nose syndrome was recently detected in a Northwest bat in Washington, alerting on the potentially great devastation of the species in the state and neighboring ones.
Caused by the fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans, the syndrome results in white colorations on the bats' wings, ears, as well as muzzle. It causes the hibernating ones to prematurely wake up, fly around, and consume their fat stores, eventually starving or freezing to death.
The sickness has a bat-to-bat transmission and currently shows no signs of affecting humans and other animal species, according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW). Humans, however, are deemed as potential carriers of the fungus through their clothing and gear when they do cave explorations.
Researchers have been studying little brown bat species to see how winter populations in some hibernation areas appear to have stabilized - and how the bats are dealing exactly with the lethal infection.
Biologist Scott Darling, who is with the fish and wildlife department of Vermont, is hopeful about population recovery, which has appeared to take place in upstate New York and Vermont locations.
"The caveat, of course, is stabilization is at probably 10 percent of what it was of the population. But still, it's good to know they're not continuing to decline," he says in an AP report.
Bats are instrumental in controlling numbers of insects that can wreak havoc on wheat and other crops. Some wildlife experts predicted that little brown bats could disappear from the Northeast U.S. by 2026, while the northern long-eared bat was categorized as threatened last year.
Photo: Jonathan Mays | Flickr
