Response 9: White Nose Syndrome

This is an example of a problem that is not concentrated within Pittsburgh but has the potential to gravely affect residents here. In the winter of 2006, while New York State bats were hibernating as snugly as one can in a cave, they began develop spots of white fungus on their wings and muzzles. The growths were accompanied by a change in behavior - the hibernacula began to migrate toward the mouths of their caves. As the fungus grew, the bats came out of hibernation in daylight and left the caves to die.

In three years, the white nose syndome (WNS) has spread from New York to Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Jersey, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. This October, the bat body count breached a million. It stood at only half a million this May. What's worse, no one seems to understand why the disease is killing bats, or how it's spreading. The graveness of the problem is indicated by the fact that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service offered up $800,000 in grants to explore the causes, vectors, and possible treatments for the disease on October 26, 2009 - only two weeks ago. Four days later, Congress approve $1.9 million for research on WNS.

The main concern for humans from the decimated bat population is agricultural. Bats are huge consumers of insects, consuming as much as their own body weight each night. The U.S. Forest Service has estimated that as much as 2.4 million pounds of bugs will go uneaten as a direct result of the dying bat population. This translates to many more crops that will be eaten by the bugs. Farmers may resort to using more insecticides to combat the increase in insect population.

The problem has been likened to CCD or Colony Collapse Disorder, an acronym used to describe the mysterious disappearance of honey bee colonies. Another phenomenon observed in the northeastern United States, the disappearance of honey bees has harmed the agricultural industry because, as every elementary school student knows, bees pollenate flowers. Without honey bees to pollenate their plants, farmers have begun "renting" beehives from apiarists in order to ensure a healthy crop.

Bat-keeping has yet to develop as hobby, and the particulars of bat behavior make it unlikely that humans will ever "keep" bats the way we keep bees. One human hobby that is potentially destructive to the bats, however, is caving. Cavers have been identified as a possibly vector for the spread of the white-nosed fungus; they potentially pick up the fungus on their clothing and gear in one caves and leave it in other caves. One solution to the caving problem is to require all cavers to sterilize (read: bleach) their gear after every trip. Another solution is to ban caving altogether, an action taken by the Tennessee Valley Authority just today.

As creatures of the day we perhaps overlook the problems facing creatures of the night. For more information on WNS, visit http://www.caves.org/grotto/dcg/white-nose.html .