The one error I see is that they have found what it is that is afflicting the bees and are already dealing with it in an efficient way. Now for the bat mystery.
From http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23169737/
By Michael Hill
updated 3:15 p.m. ET, Thurs., Feb. 14, 2008
ROSENDALE, N.Y. - Bats in New York and Vermont are mysteriously dying off by the thousands, often with a white ring of fungus around their noses, and scientists in hazmat suits are crawling into dank caves to find out why.
"White nose syndrome," as the killer has been dubbed, is spreading at an alarming rate, with researchers calling it the gravest threat in memory to bats in the U.S.
"This is definitely unprecedented," said Lori Pruitt, an endangered-species biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Bloomington, Ind. "The hugest concern at this point is that we do not know what it is."
A significant loss of bats is chilling in itself to wildlife experts. But —like the mysterious mass die-offs around the country of bees that pollinate all sorts of vital fruits and vegetables — the bat deaths could have economic implications. Bats feed on insects that can damage dozens of crops, including wheat and apples.
"Without large populations of bats, there would certainly be an impact on agriculture," said Barbara French of Bat Conservation International of Austin, Texas.
White nose syndrome has afflicted at least four species of hibernating bats, spreading from a cluster of four caves near Albany last winter to more than a dozen caverns up to 130 miles away.
Alan Hicks, a wildlife biologist with the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, said he fears a catastrophic collapse of the region's bat population and is urgently enlisting experts around the country to find the cause.
It is not even clear if the fungus around the bats' noses — something scientists say they have never seen before — is a cause or a symptom. It may be a sign the bats are too sick to groom themselves, said Beth Buckles, a veterinary pathologist at Cornell University.
The die-offs could be caused by bacteria or a virus. Or the bats could be reacting to some toxin or other environmental factor. Whatever it is, afflicted bats are burning through their winter stores of fat before hibernation ends in the spring, and appear to be starving.
The Northeast has generally had mild winters in recent years. But Hicks said he doubts that is the culprit in some way, since there are no reports of large die-offs in warmer states.
Nor are there any known links between what is wiping out the bees and what is killing the bats. The cause of the bee deaths is still a mystery, though scientists are looking at pesticides, parasites and a virus not previously seen in the U.S.
Researchers said there is no evidence the mysterious killer is any threat to humans. Scientists venturing into the caves wear hazardous-materials suits and breathing masks primarily to protect the bats, not themselves.
Hicks said it is possible that a cave explorer introduced the problem in the Albany-area caves and that it spread from there. "It could have been some caver in Tanzania with a little mud on his boot and a week later he's in a cave in New York," he said.
1 comments:
I have examined many bats from the on going bat mortalities in New York state. As the state wildlife pathologist with 38 years of experience I have seen starvation in many species of wildlife, and the gross and histopathology is typical of death from starvation.
The bats have emaciated carcasses
with exhausted subcutaneous , abdominal cavity, and perirenal fat
supplies.The bats appear to have lost about 55-60 percent of their body wight when they are dying in February. Many of the freshly dead bats appear to be dehydrated.It is important to note that the majority of the bat cacasses to date don't show fungal growth or lesions. On the ones that do it appears that the fungus is acting much more like a commensal than a
pathogen. Only two cases of mycosis were found, so far, where fungal growth was present in the living parts of the skin.In the rest the fungus was limited to growing on the very outer keratinized layer. Tissue reactions were scant in the two mycosis cases and seemed non existent in most bats with the "white snout syndrome." We have also watched little Brown bats rapidly clean the cottony fungal growth from there faces following arousal from a torpid state.I would postulate the the growth of saprodes on skin of bats has gone on for eons of time . It isn't surprising to me that saprodes would grow at times on largely immobilized torpid or hibernating bats especially on starving bats with suppressed immune systems.It appears the the fungus of "white snout" continues
to grow on the carcasses post mortem. We have identified three fungal genera on the bats' skins with Fusarium being most commonly isolated so far.
We found some parasies in and on the bats but none can account for the starvation state. Chlorinated hydrocarbon screens and elemental analyses are underway ,in a large part, to see if they could play a secondary role in suppressing the immune systems.There is no histopath ology to suggest a viral pathogen cauueing this now fairly wide spread and multihibernicula mortality.
My diagnosis based on my studies to date in the eastern region of New York is starvation resuting from climate change that has kept bats flyig durig fall, winter and early spring periods when insects are in short supply to almost nonexistent in the air.Many starving bats are out seeking prey during warmer parts of a day and take shelter in more exposed aras than the caves or mines from which the came. Exposure to freezing temperatures for hours to a few days is the Coup de grace for these moribund bats. Exacerbateing the bats weather related problems of the last two years is a shortage of many moths in eastern New York. It doesn't seem surpriseing that starvation could be the primary problem. Let's hope the weather and insect populations are changing in favor of the bats. But it is likely that in the comeing years that global warming will
be a challenge to bats and other northeastern wildife. With so many starving bats in eastern New York and nearby areas extra efforts should be made to not disturb them so that more will survive the winter.
Post a Comment