White Nose Syndrome
White-nose syndrome haunts bats
The mysterious disease is obliterating bat colonies as it spreads across North America, and scientists say time is running out to save them.
7
Related Topics:
Conservation, Endangered Species, Viruses & Diseases, Wild Animals
Bats are flying ambassadors of Halloween, adding spooky ambience to countless forests, caves, graveyards and haunted houses. Lately, however, the tables have turned on them — Halloween and the winter it foreshadows are now an increasingly scary time to be a bat in America. That's because a deadly, cave-dwelling disease known as white-nose syndrome is sweeping the country, with a 100 percent mortality rate in many bat colonies. Seven years after it first appeared in a single New York cave, the fungus has now invaded 22 U.S. states and five Canadian provinces, killing roughly 6 million bats along the way. Scientists still aren't sure where it came from, where it will go next or even how exactly it kills. "We can't directly link the fungus to organ failure or anything like that," says U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Susi von Oettingen. "It certainly is ultimately responsible for the death, but we're not sure how." Scientists are sure, however, that it's bad news for millions of American bats, which recover slowly from population loss since many have just one offspring per year. Bat experts also worry that white-nose syndrome may already be hopping through vast cave networks underneath the U.S. Midwest and Southeast, potentially wiping out endangered species like the gray bat and the Indiana bat. And what's bad for bats is often bad for people, too. As a top predator of flying insects, bats regulate populations of mosquitoes and other biting bugs that spread disease to humans, as well as agricultural pests like beetles and moths. Every 1 million bats can eat about 700 tons of insects per year, and insect-eating bats overall save the U.S. agriculture industry an estimated $3 billion
The mysterious disease is obliterating bat colonies as it spreads across North America, and scientists say time is running out to save them.
7
Related Topics:
Conservation, Endangered Species, Viruses & Diseases, Wild Animals
Bats are flying ambassadors of Halloween, adding spooky ambience to countless forests, caves, graveyards and haunted houses. Lately, however, the tables have turned on them — Halloween and the winter it foreshadows are now an increasingly scary time to be a bat in America. That's because a deadly, cave-dwelling disease known as white-nose syndrome is sweeping the country, with a 100 percent mortality rate in many bat colonies. Seven years after it first appeared in a single New York cave, the fungus has now invaded 22 U.S. states and five Canadian provinces, killing roughly 6 million bats along the way. Scientists still aren't sure where it came from, where it will go next or even how exactly it kills. "We can't directly link the fungus to organ failure or anything like that," says U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Susi von Oettingen. "It certainly is ultimately responsible for the death, but we're not sure how." Scientists are sure, however, that it's bad news for millions of American bats, which recover slowly from population loss since many have just one offspring per year. Bat experts also worry that white-nose syndrome may already be hopping through vast cave networks underneath the U.S. Midwest and Southeast, potentially wiping out endangered species like the gray bat and the Indiana bat. And what's bad for bats is often bad for people, too. As a top predator of flying insects, bats regulate populations of mosquitoes and other biting bugs that spread disease to humans, as well as agricultural pests like beetles and moths. Every 1 million bats can eat about 700 tons of insects per year, and insect-eating bats overall save the U.S. agriculture industry an estimated $3 billion