A little brown bat with white-nose syndrome. Credit: Marvin Moriarty/USFWS
We often curse some animals we don’t like in nature. Mosquitoes come to mind as the first choice. And a lot of people don’t like bats because of the movies, but they are masterful at pest control. According to the US Forest Service bats catch 1,000 mosquito-sized insects in an hour, and a nursing mother eats approximately 4,500 insects every night.
When insect-eating bats are wiped out by a new fungus found in the US known as ‘white nose syndrome’, farmers turn to pesticides for pest control — possibly leading to knock-on effects for human health and the survival rates of babies.
Researchers compared counties in the northeastern United States where the white nose fungus had killed most bats to those areas where the disease hadn’t yet spread.
In places where bat populations had crashed, farmers used 31% more insecticides and infant deaths not due to accidents or homicides rose by 8% — numbers that the authors suggest might be linked. Where bats remained, there was no change in pesticide use or infant mortality.
Tricolored bat from Avery County, North Carolina, with white-nose syndrome. Credit:Gabrielle Graeter/NCWR.
White-nose syndrome (WNS) according to the NGO in its name is a disease that affects hibernating bats and is caused by a fungus, Pseudogymnoascus destructans, or Pd for short. Sometimes Pd looks like a white fuzz on bats’ faces, which is how the disease got its name. Pd grows in cold, dark and damp places.
White nose syndrome in bats. Little Brown Bat; close up of nose with fungus, New York, Oct. 2008. Credit: Ryan von Linden/New York Department of Environmental Conservation
It attacks the bare skin of bats while they’re hibernating in a relatively inactive state. As it grows, Pd causes changes in bats that make them become active more than usual and burn up fat they need to survive the winter. Bats with white-nose syndrome may do strange things like fly outside in the daytime in the winter.
Where did White-nose Syndrome Come From?
Biologists first saw bats sick and dying from white-nose syndrome in 2007 in caves near Albany, New York. However, cave explorers in that area had taken a photo of bats with a white powder on their noses the year before, so white-nose syndrome has been in North America at least since 2006.
Read related: Making bats habitat in cities
According to the whitenosesyndrome website white-nose syndrome has killed millions of bats in North America. At some sites, 90 to 100 percent of bats have died. Several species are affected, with the hardest-hit being the northern long-eared bat, little brown bat, and tricolored bat.
There is no cure for white-nose syndrome, but scientists from all over the world are working together to study the disease, how it spreads and infects bats and what we can do to control it. Several experimental treatments, including a vaccine and making changes to bat habitats, are in progress and will hopefully lead to increased survival of bats from this devastating disease.
Author: Karin Kloosterman
Karin Kloosterman is an award-winning journalist, innovation strategist, and founder of Green Prophet, one of the Middle East’s pioneering sustainability platforms. She has ranked in the Top 10 of Verizon innovation competitions, participated in NASA-linked challenges, and spoken worldwide on climate, food security, and future resilience. With an IoT technology patent, features in Canada’s National Post, and leadership inside teams building next-generation agricultural and planetary systems — including Mars-farming concepts — Karin operates at the intersection of storytelling, science, and systems change. She doesn’t report on the future – she helps design it. Reach out directly to [email protected]
