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Hi Steve & All, July 7, 2013
Because White nose spreads by direct contact I think one can rule out
tourists or researchers as carriers that brought a European disease to NA.
I think the chances of some person becoming cosy with a huddle of bats
in Europe, zipping across the Atlantic and then hanging out with some North
American bats, all without washing, bathing or changing clothes, is very
unlikely.
The most likely route, in my view, would be by "bat air". Container,
cargo and passenger ships are also possible but the long time at sea might
be fatal (just guessing).
All it takes is one crate/container with a hole large enough for a bat
to enter, parked outside in Europe some evening, and transfer of that crate
while the bat is asleep to a cargo hold. Once in NA it just needs to go
through Customs & Immigration, have it's passport stamped and the rest is
history.
Yt, Dave Webster, Kentville
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stephen R. Shaw" <srshaw@Dal.Ca>
To: <naturens@chebucto.ns.ca>
Sent: Friday, July 05, 2013 2:59 AM
Subject: Re: [NatureNS] re bats endangered -- good for other insectivores??
> Despite the plaudits so far, I'd extend Jim's polite comments further to
> say that we take the C-H paper version at home, and found the C-H bat
> article in it to be singularly uninformative -- it didn't even contain
> info on who to contact if you had the requested bat sightings. These
> occasional nature pieces for the C-H are a great idea, but the surprise
> in this case is that the consortium of writers that produce them (which
> includes David P) didn't get the local person who actually works on bats
> and therefore knows something about them, to write the article - Hugh
> Broders of SMU.
>
> I didn't catch the Andrew Hebda interview so the following may be
> superfluous, but what I've picked up just from a couple of local talks
> here is that the fungus is genetically identically or almost so to the
> European strain. This implies that it was imported somehow from there (on
> some tourist's or researcher's boots?) and tracked into the single cave
> in NY State where the outbreak is known to have started, and from which
> it has since radiated outwards quickly. Bats (or some of them) don't
> return to the same roosting site but often disperse to different roosts
> each morning. This spreads the fungus widely to infect those in other
> roosts. That occurs by direct contact between bats -- uninfected bats
> kept in cages right next to infected ones don't catch it, meaning that it
> does not usually behave as an airborne pathogen. The fungus in Europe
> seems to have little current effect on the bats there, which from general
> host-parasite studies is thought to imply that the association between
> the two has been long-term, so the host bats have eventually become
> largely immune to the pathogen. Whether 'long-term' means a few tens of
> years or 'since the last ice age' is unclear, but the jump of one
> now-less-potent malarial parasite from birds to humans has been placed
> way back, at an estimated ~12,000 years if memory serves correctly.
>
> What's unclear to me but someone here will have the answer, is whether
> the disappearing NE American/Canadian bats are the same species (or
> subspecies whatever that means) that occur in Europe. If so, perhaps
> thought is being given to trying to import some individuals of the
> counterpart species, that presumably have immunity to the fungus and so
> might help to regenerate the local species here?
>
> Steve (Halifax)
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> Quoting "James W. Wolford" <jimwolford@eastlink.ca>:
>>> Subject: [ValleyNature] re bats endangered -- good for other
>>> insectivores??
>>>
>>> Today on CBC Radio News, Andrew Hebda said it might not be long before
>>> our little brown bat is extinct, considering the precipitous decline
>>> over the past two winters in the hibernacula. Thus Andrew was
>>> predicting that, without their night-time enemies, mosquitoes are
>>> liable to get much more abundant and troublesome for us than usual.
>>>
>>> But I wonder if this general insect abundance might actually help our
>>> troubled aerial insectivores a bit (swifts, swallows, nighthawks,
>>> flycatchers, others?)?
>>>
>>> Hugh or Mark or Andrew or Fred or Don, Mark's great article in
>>> Saturday's NovaScotian section (Herald) left out any information on the
>>> history of the fungus (Geomyces destructans) and the bat populations
>>> in Europe. Is much known about how the bats fared then and, if they
>>> declined hugely like ours, how long it took them to creep back into
>>> present abundance. I think I have heard or read that the same fungus
>>> now doesn't seem to be affecting the bats much or at all in the Old
>>> World.
>>>
>>> Cheers from Jim in Wolfville.
>
>
>
> -----
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