Featured story
Bat Week Highlights |
|
| Bat Week, every year from October 24 to October 31, is an annual, international celebration of the role of bats in nature and is organized by an international collective of partners, including the Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative. Each year we help Bat Week grow in North America and we’re steadily making this a global celebration of bats. In this featured story we would like to highlight some of the resources and accomplishments of the various Bat Week partners we work with.
Bat Week is a time to celebrate our bats and to spread the word about how we can help protect them. One great way to do this is to ask your town, city, or state officials to make a formal proclamation. Take a look at the Bat Week proclamations made by Calgary, Edmonton, and Medicine Hat in Alberta. Additionally, the Alberta Minister of Environment and Parks has declared Bat Week and encouraged young Albertans to learn about and respect bats.
The Native Bat Conservation Program at the Toronto Zoo put together a Bat Diaries video demonstrating how researchers catch (and sometimes don’t catch) bats. They are using cool night vision cameras to show you some natural behaviour of bats inside their roost.
FightWNS is an advocacy initiative that celebrates microbats as beautiful and essential components of our ecosystem and financially supports white-nose syndrome and Pseudogymnoascus destructans research via their ‘Microgrants for Microbats’ program. For Bat Week, FightWNS developed a beautiful Bat alphabet which highlights the many reasons bats are valuable.
Mister:G, Ben Gundersheimer, created a curriculum that incorporates songwriting as a learning tool. Ben has released ten albums as Mister G in a broad range of genres and styles and has recorded a wonderful song about the importance of bats: ‘Bats on the Brink’.
Bat Week might only be one week a year, but partners across Canada are working non-stop to better understand bats, mitigate threats to bats, and employ recovery strategies to severely impacted bat populations. On the CWHC Facebook page we featured a bat story every day of Bat Week, but on our website and on the Bat Week website there is tons of information on how anyone can help bats all year round.
Submitted by Jordi Segers |
|
Featured contributor
Dr. Erin Baerwald, Assistant Professor at the University of Northern British Columbia |
|
| I am a newly appointed (!) Assistant Professor of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation at the University of Northern British Columbia in Prince George, BC. I got into bats as an undergrad at the University of Alberta in 2003, where I met Dr. Cori Lausen, then a PhD student with Dr. Robert Barclay at the University of Calgary. I got totally hooked on bats (as one does!), so worked with Cori for four long summers and then did my MSc and PhD with Robert. I went on to do two postdocs, first with the American Wind Wildlife Institute based out of Washington D.C. and then with Dr. Mark Brigham at the University of Regina. Most of my research to date has been on understanding the causes and consequences of migratory bat fatalities at wind energy facilities, but I am generally interested in migratory behaviours (e.g. orientation and navigation mechanisms) and conservation of migratory bats. I have used a range of techniques including field work, modelling, and laboratory analyses to address my questions (of which there are many!). I am also actively involved in conservation policy: I have helped write several guidance documents for bats and wind energy development and am an active member of the IUCN’s bat specialist group and a migratory-bat expert for the United Nation’s Convention of Migratory Species. In 2014, I was awarded the American Society of Mammalogist’s William T. Hornaday Award for excellence in conservation of mammals and their habitats as a student. I am absolutely thrilled to be starting at UNBC this winter and can’t wait to start studying bats in the boreal forest! |
|
Publications
Long-term survival of Pseudogymnoascus destructans at elevated temperatures
Campbell et al.
White-nose syndrome is an emerging fungal disease that has devastated hibernating bat populations across eastern North America. The causal pathogen, Pseudogymnoascus destructans (PD), is a psychrophilic fungus with a known maximal growth temperature of 20 C. Although it is widely speculated that PD is primarily spread between hibernacula by the movement of bats, experimental evidence is lacking to demonstrate that PD can endure temperatures experienced by active bats for periods of time that would facilitate dispersal of viable fungus. We used an in vitro culture-based approach to study the survival of PD conidia on three artificial growth media and bat fur. The fungus was incubated at three temperatures it might realistically be exposed to on nonhibernating bats or in the environment outside of caves and mines (24 C, 30 C, and 37 C). When incubated on artificial media, we found that PD conidia were able to survive for a maximum of 150 d when exposed to temperatures of 24 C, 60 d at 30 C, and 15 d at 37 C. At all temperatures, maximal survival duration was recorded when conidia were incubated on brain–heart infusion agar with 10% volume of sheep (Ovis aries) blood. When incubated on bat fur, viable PD was recovered at 180 d, 60 d, and 5 d when exposed to temperatures of 24 C, 30 C, and 37 C, respectively. Our results suggest that viable PD conidia may be able to survive on or within the bodies of bats, which may facilitate long-distance dispersal. The long-term viability of the fungus on various fomites may differ, and therefore must be assessed for each potential substrate.
Journal of Wildlife Diseases In-Press.
The status of Pseudogymnoascus destructans in Louisiana
Limon et al.
White-nose syndrome (WNS) represents an emerging infectious disease in bats caused by the fungal pathogen Pseudogymnoascus destructans (Pd). The fatal disease has devastated populations of several species of bats in North America, so there is interest in delimiting its current range to aid containment and other management efforts. Early detection of the fungus aids in risk assessment of the disease and managing its presence in areas with hibernating bats. Infection by Pd in bats has been neither surveyed nor reported in Louisiana, despite the fact that WNS has been recorded approximately 150 km across the border of two neighboring states, Arkansas and Mississippi. Between December 2015 and January 2016, we surveyed 190 culverts distributed across the northern portion of Louisiana. In total, we encountered 801 individual bats (355 Perimyotis subflavus, 299 Myotis, 54 Eptesicus fuscus, 47 Tadarida brasiliensis, and 46 Corynorhinus rafinesquii). We used ultraviolet illumination to inspect each individual for presence of WNS symptoms, and no visible symptoms were detected. We also swabbed the skin of 244 bats and 316 habitat walls, and swabs were returned to the laboratory and analyzed using quantitative polymerase chain reaction and Pd-specific primers for presence of the pathogen. No genetic detections occurred in any bat or habitat wall samples. Based on negative detection, we hypothesize that the fungus has not yet been introduced into the state of Louisiana or the environmental conditions of culverts found in Louisiana are not conducive to persistence of the fungus; however, ours is the first survey to assess the status of Pd in the state. Monitoring should continue to confirm that no evidence of the fungal pathogen exists anywhere in the state and to enable rapid response if detection occurs.
The Southwestern Naturalist, 63(4):216-219 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1894/0038-4909-63-4-216
|
|
|
|
