Fungus blamed in millions of bat deaths

WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 (UPI) -- White-nose fungus, a bat disease first detected in a New York cave, has killed an estimated 6.7 million bats in 16 states and Canada, officials said.

The estimate, drawn from surveys by wildlife officials mostly in Northeastern states and announced by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Tuesday, has conservationists worried about the long-term survival of the little brown bat, the northern long-eared bat and the tricolored bat.

"We're watching a potential extinction event on the order of what we experienced with bison and passenger pigeons for this group of mammals," Mylea Bayless, conservation programs manager for Bat Conservation International in Austin, Texas, said.

"Unlike some of the extinction events or population depletion events we've seen in the past, we're looking at a whole group of animals here, not just one species," she told The Washington Post. "We don't know what that means, but it could be catastrophic."

White-nose syndrome, caused by a fungus called Geomyces destructans that eats through the skin and membranes of bats, was first detected in a cave near Albany, N.Y., in 2006.

Since then, biologists in multiple states examining caves and mines during the annual winter hibernation of bats have found alarming numbers of dead animals.

The bats' decline could begin to affect the general public if their disappearance results in an explosion of the insects they normally feed on and higher food prices if crops are invaded by those swarms of insects, biologists said.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2012/01/18/Fungus-blamed-in-millions-of-bat-deaths/UPI-90911326914762/#ixzz1k6HWMNqs

Amphibians face spread of 3 threats

WASHINGTON — Frogs, salamanders and other amphibians might eventually have no haven left on the globe because of a triple threat of worsening scourges, a new study predicts.

Scientists have long known that amphibians are under attack from a killer fungus, climate change and shrinking habitat. In the study, appearing online in the journal Nature, computer models project that
in about 70 years, those three threats will spread, leaving no part of the world immune to one of them.

Several important U.S. amphibian species — such as boreal toads in the Rocky Mountains, and the mountain yellow legged frog in the Sierra Nevada — are shrinking in numbers, said zoologist Steve Corn, who is part of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative. The problem is worse in the western United States.

About one-third of the world’s amphibian species are known to be threatened with extinction.
“It’s no fun being a frog,” said biodiversity conservationist Stuart Pimm of Duke University, who wasn’t part of the study or the USGS effort. “They are getting it from all three different factors.”

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/national_world/2011/11/19/amphibians-face-spread-of-3-threats.html

Scientists find a new species of fungus -- in a wasp nest

Mucor nidicola species previously unknown to science

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. – While some researchers look for new species in such exotic places as the deep sea, tropical regions, or extreme environments, a team headed by Tufts researchers turned their attention towards nests of an invasive paper wasp. What they found was a new species of fungus.

Philip T. Starks, associate professor of biology at the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University, and doctoral student Anne A. Madden published their discovery in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology. The news appeared online September 19, 2011, in advance of print.

"We found the fungus in a wasp nest near the dumpsters at Tufts University," says Madden, of the discovery. The research team set out to explore a new environment for novel species of bacteria and fungi—single-celled organisms that inhabit most places in the world. Despite there being more bacterial species in the world than stars in the sky, scientists have only described approximately 10 percent of the species thought to exist, says Madden.

Attempts to identify species are hindered by the difficulty scientists encounter when working with organisms so small that hundreds of thousands can fit on the period at the end of this sentence.
These wasps often build nests on houses, trash containers and other familiar structures. "Nests of the invasive species of paper wasps had never been investigated for their microbial community," says Madden. "This is despite the wasp's cosmopolitan distribution and their frequent use as a model system in the field of animal behavior. Because researchers know so much about this host wasp, we thought it would be particularly valuable to characterize the microbes of the nest."

The scientists took samples from active nests and placed them in a nutrient-based medium as one would plant a garden with a handful of unknown seeds to see what grows. The researchers grew a number of different fungi and used genetic sequencing techniques to tease apart species identities. They found that one fungus had a unique gene sequence that suggested it had not previously been characterized.

Read more ...

Supersize Spores Make Fungal Infections More Deadly, Possibly Explaining Victims in Missouri

This season's tornado outbreak in the U.S. left some unusual casualties in its wake. At least three people have reportedly died from a virulent fungal infection and several more remain infected following the storms that struck Missouri last month.

Such severe fungal infections are rare but can be fatal if allowed to spread throughout the body—especially for people with compromised immune systems. A fungus's severity had been thought to be a factor of its type or method of spreading. But new research suggests that there is one key determinant in how deadly a fungal infection is going to be: spore size.

Read on...

Bat cull 'will not stop white-nose syndrome spreading'

By Mark Kinver Science and environment reporter, BBC News

Culling will not halt the spread of a disease that has killed a million bats in the US since 2006, a study says.

Researchers reached their conclusion by modelling how white-nose syndrome (WNS) is passed from bat to bat.

Writing in Conservation Biology, they add that a cull would not work because the source of the fungal pathogen is believed to occur in the environment.

Earlier studies have warned that WNS could wipe out bat populations in the north-east of the US within 20 years.

Carrying out a cull of bats in areas where the disease is known to be present is one of the options available in an attempt to contain the spread of the killer fungus.

Continue reading the main story

White-nose syndrome

• WNS is associated with a fungus known as Geomyces destructans
• Once present in a colony, WNS can wipe out the entire population
• It was first reported in a cave in New York in February 2006
• The most common visible symptom of an infected bat is a white fungus on the animal's nose, but it can also appear on its wings, ears or tail
• Other symptoms include weight loss and abnormal behaviour, such as flying in daylight or sub-zero temperatures
• Species known to be vulnerable to WNS include: tri-coloured, little brown, big brown, northern long-eared, small-footed and Indiana bats
• There is no known risk to human health

(Source: US Fish & Wildlife Service)

"We developed a model taking into account the complexity of the bat life history, looking at the roosts and the areas where there are large contacts between the bats," said co-author Thomas Hallam from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee.

"Given the dispersal aspect of the problem and the complexity of hibernating bat ecology, it was a case that these things together certainly meant that culling would not work in the case of bats."

WNS, described by some as the worst wildlife health crisis in the US in living memory, is named after a white fungus that appears on the muzzle and/or wings of infected animals.

However, bats with WNS do not always have the characteristic visual symptoms, but may display abnormal behaviour around their hibernacula (caves and mines where bats hibernate during winter months).

These behaviours include flying outside during the day (when their insect prey is not available) in sub-zero temperatures, or clustering near the entrance to the hibernaculum.

Professor Hallam explained that there was a high degree of bat-to-bat interaction, which has been identified as the main way the disease is transmitted, during the course of a year.

In autumn, the mating season brings together large numbers of males and females.

This occurs shortly before colonies enter hibernacula, some of which are large enough to house in the region of half-a-million bats.

In the spring, females head to a maternity roost to have their young. Again, this brings bats into contact with members of different colonies.

Since WNS was first recorded in February 2006 in a commercial cave in New York, it has spread to at least 14 states. Cases have also been recorded in a number of Canadian provinces.

Researchers say the fungus associated with the disease, Geomyces destructans, thrives in the dark, damp conditions - such as caves and mines.

Out of control

In their paper, Professor Hallam and co-author Gary McCracken write: "Because the disease is highly virulent, our model results support the hypothesis that transmission occurs in all contact arenas."

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

I don't see any easy solution on the horizon”

End Quote Thomas Hallam

They add: "Our simulations indicated culling will not control WNS in bats primarily because contact rates are high among colonial bats, contact occurs in multiple arenas, and periodic movement between arenas occurs."

Jeremy Coleman, the national white-nose syndrome co-ordinator for the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), said that culling was a potential tool available to agencies attempting to curb the spread of the disease.

"The spread has been very rapid and very alarming," he told BBC News.

"The initial comment that spawned all of the ideas of culling was that if we had known what would happen, then we would have gone in and killed every bat and we would not be facing this problem.

"That had a real resonance among researchers and land managers," Dr Coleman recalled. But he added: "Most people, I would say, feel it is too late for any culling to be effective."

He explained that the final decision on whether to cull would rest with state or federal agencies.

It is believed that the fungus associated with WNS arrived in the US after it was somehow transported from Europe or possibly Asia.

To date, 14 states have recorded cases of white-nose syndrome and the fungus

"It was possibly brought over via 'human-assisted spread' of some sort - like on somebody's boots," Dr Coleman suggested.

"Another possibility is that a bat was somehow transported to North America, perhaps by a cargo plane or freight container, and mixed with bats in New York State."

A team of European researchers followed up unconfirmed reports in Europe that bats had white fungal growths appearing to match the symptoms of WNS.

In a paper in the Emerging Infectious Diseases journal, they suggested that the Geomyces destructans fungus was present throughout Europe.

However, they added, it seemed as if species of bats in Europe were possibly more immunologically or behaviourally resistant to the fungus than North American species, as it did not increase mortality.

No magic bullet

European bats may be resistant to the disease because they are generally bigger than comparable species in the US. Also, European colonies tend to be not as large as ones found on the other side of the Atlantic.

"What we hope to learn, through genetic means, is the similarities and differences between the North American strains and the European strains," explained Dr Coleman, who is overseeing the formation of a national management plan that hopes to bring together the efforts of state and federal agencies under one umbrella.

US researchers based at MIT recently sequenced the genome of the US strain of G. destructans and made the data publicly available in a hope that it would "jumpstart work on this problem, to help devise ways to track and combat this fungus".

"There are a lot of questions where some answers could potentially could give us some hope," observed Dr Coleman.

Professor Hallam said it was difficult to know if anything could be done to prevent the current outbreak from spreading further and wiping out millions more US bats.

"We have a lot of chemical agents that will get rid of the fungus," he told BBC News.

"The difficulty is the complexity of bats' life histories; it is almost impossible to treat enough bats to make it worthwhile.

"I don't see any easy solution on the horizon."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11878001

Bat cull 'will not stop white-nose syndrome spreading'

By Mark Kinver Science and environment reporter, BBC News

Culling will not halt the spread of a disease that has killed a million bats in the US since 2006, a study says.

Researchers reached their conclusion by modelling how white-nose syndrome (WNS) is passed from bat to bat.

Writing in Conservation Biology, they add that a cull would not work because the source of the fungal pathogen is believed to occur in the environment.

Earlier studies have warned that WNS could wipe out bat populations in the north-east of the US within 20 years.

Carrying out a cull of bats in areas where the disease is known to be present is one of the options available in an attempt to contain the spread of the killer fungus.

Continue reading the main story

White-nose syndrome

• WNS is associated with a fungus known as Geomyces destructans
• Once present in a colony, WNS can wipe out the entire population
• It was first reported in a cave in New York in February 2006
• The most common visible symptom of an infected bat is a white fungus on the animal's nose, but it can also appear on its wings, ears or tail
• Other symptoms include weight loss and abnormal behaviour, such as flying in daylight or sub-zero temperatures
• Species known to be vulnerable to WNS include: tri-coloured, little brown, big brown, northern long-eared, small-footed and Indiana bats
• There is no known risk to human health

(Source: US Fish & Wildlife Service)

"We developed a model taking into account the complexity of the bat life history, looking at the roosts and the areas where there are large contacts between the bats," said co-author Thomas Hallam from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee.

"Given the dispersal aspect of the problem and the complexity of hibernating bat ecology, it was a case that these things together certainly meant that culling would not work in the case of bats."

WNS, described by some as the worst wildlife health crisis in the US in living memory, is named after a white fungus that appears on the muzzle and/or wings of infected animals.

However, bats with WNS do not always have the characteristic visual symptoms, but may display abnormal behaviour around their hibernacula (caves and mines where bats hibernate during winter months).

These behaviours include flying outside during the day (when their insect prey is not available) in sub-zero temperatures, or clustering near the entrance to the hibernaculum.

Professor Hallam explained that there was a high degree of bat-to-bat interaction, which has been identified as the main way the disease is transmitted, during the course of a year.

In autumn, the mating season brings together large numbers of males and females.

This occurs shortly before colonies enter hibernacula, some of which are large enough to house in the region of half-a-million bats.

In the spring, females head to a maternity roost to have their young. Again, this brings bats into contact with members of different colonies.

Since WNS was first recorded in February 2006 in a commercial cave in New York, it has spread to at least 14 states. Cases have also been recorded in a number of Canadian provinces.

Researchers say the fungus associated with the disease, Geomyces destructans, thrives in the dark, damp conditions - such as caves and mines.

Out of control

In their paper, Professor Hallam and co-author Gary McCracken write: "Because the disease is highly virulent, our model results support the hypothesis that transmission occurs in all contact arenas."

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

I don't see any easy solution on the horizon”

End Quote Thomas Hallam

They add: "Our simulations indicated culling will not control WNS in bats primarily because contact rates are high among colonial bats, contact occurs in multiple arenas, and periodic movement between arenas occurs."

Jeremy Coleman, the national white-nose syndrome co-ordinator for the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), said that culling was a potential tool available to agencies attempting to curb the spread of the disease.

"The spread has been very rapid and very alarming," he told BBC News.

"The initial comment that spawned all of the ideas of culling was that if we had known what would happen, then we would have gone in and killed every bat and we would not be facing this problem.

"That had a real resonance among researchers and land managers," Dr Coleman recalled. But he added: "Most people, I would say, feel it is too late for any culling to be effective."

He explained that the final decision on whether to cull would rest with state or federal agencies.

It is believed that the fungus associated with WNS arrived in the US after it was somehow transported from Europe or possibly Asia.

To date, 14 states have recorded cases of white-nose syndrome and the fungus

"It was possibly brought over via 'human-assisted spread' of some sort - like on somebody's boots," Dr Coleman suggested.

"Another possibility is that a bat was somehow transported to North America, perhaps by a cargo plane or freight container, and mixed with bats in New York State."

A team of European researchers followed up unconfirmed reports in Europe that bats had white fungal growths appearing to match the symptoms of WNS.

In a paper in the Emerging Infectious Diseases journal, they suggested that the Geomyces destructans fungus was present throughout Europe.

However, they added, it seemed as if species of bats in Europe were possibly more immunologically or behaviourally resistant to the fungus than North American species, as it did not increase mortality.

No magic bullet

European bats may be resistant to the disease because they are generally bigger than comparable species in the US. Also, European colonies tend to be not as large as ones found on the other side of the Atlantic.

"What we hope to learn, through genetic means, is the similarities and differences between the North American strains and the European strains," explained Dr Coleman, who is overseeing the formation of a national management plan that hopes to bring together the efforts of state and federal agencies under one umbrella.

US researchers based at MIT recently sequenced the genome of the US strain of G. destructans and made the data publicly available in a hope that it would "jumpstart work on this problem, to help devise ways to track and combat this fungus".

"There are a lot of questions where some answers could potentially could give us some hope," observed Dr Coleman.

Professor Hallam said it was difficult to know if anything could be done to prevent the current outbreak from spreading further and wiping out millions more US bats.

"We have a lot of chemical agents that will get rid of the fungus," he told BBC News.

"The difficulty is the complexity of bats' life histories; it is almost impossible to treat enough bats to make it worthwhile.

"I don't see any easy solution on the horizon."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11878001

Rare smelly fungus found in Gower

A rare foul smelling fungus with an odour of 'rotting flesh' has been found in a Gower nature reserve.

The Latticed Stinkhorn or Red Cage has erupted in a blaze of colour at Bishop's Wood near Caswell Bay.

It has been known to show up in coastal areas of southern England but Swansea council biodiversity officers believe it is the first recorded one in Wales.

Native to warmer Mediterranean countries the nearest recorded sighting to date is in Somerset.

It is still regarded as an alien species in the UK but there have been sightings in the West Country and Channel Islands.

The Association of British Fungus Groups is not aware of one being found in Wales before.

It said the tiny spores could have been carried on the wind or possibly by birds.

What has stopped it growing in the UK before is the summers have not been long enough or warm enough for it to survive.

Bishop's Wood, near Caswell Bay car park, was declared a local nature reserve in 1975.

Jo Mullett, Swansea council's biodiversity education officer, said: "It's quite an exciting find.

"The reserve is protected because of its priority species and habitats.

"The fact that the reserve is now the first site in Wales to record an example of the Latticed Stinkhorn makes it even more special."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-west-wales-11775363

Rare smelly fungus found in Gower

A rare foul smelling fungus with an odour of 'rotting flesh' has been found in a Gower nature reserve.

The Latticed Stinkhorn or Red Cage has erupted in a blaze of colour at Bishop's Wood near Caswell Bay.

It has been known to show up in coastal areas of southern England but Swansea council biodiversity officers believe it is the first recorded one in Wales.

Native to warmer Mediterranean countries the nearest recorded sighting to date is in Somerset.

It is still regarded as an alien species in the UK but there have been sightings in the West Country and Channel Islands.

The Association of British Fungus Groups is not aware of one being found in Wales before.

It said the tiny spores could have been carried on the wind or possibly by birds.

What has stopped it growing in the UK before is the summers have not been long enough or warm enough for it to survive.

Bishop's Wood, near Caswell Bay car park, was declared a local nature reserve in 1975.

Jo Mullett, Swansea council's biodiversity education officer, said: "It's quite an exciting find.

"The reserve is protected because of its priority species and habitats.

"The fact that the reserve is now the first site in Wales to record an example of the Latticed Stinkhorn makes it even more special."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-west-wales-11775363

Frog killer caught in the act

Frog killer caught in the act: DNA barcoding reveals five undiscovered frog species among 30 wiped out by fungal epidemic

Science Daily, 7/20/10 Like a wave, the fungal disease that wipes out frogs -- chytridiomycosis -- is advancing through the Central American highlands at a rate of about 30 kilometers per year. After the disappearance of Costa Rica's golden frogs in the 1980s, Karen Lips, associate professor of biology at the University of Maryland, quickly established a monitoring program at untouched sites in neighboring Panama.

Of the 63 species that she identified during surveys of Panama's Omar Torrijos National Park located in El Copé from 1998 to 2004, 25 species disappeared from the site in the subsequent epidemic. As of 2008, none of these species had reappeared there.

Were there additional species in the park not previously known to scientists? To find out, the authors used a genetic technique called DNA barcoding to quickly estimate that another 11 unnamed or "candidate" species were also present. In DNA barcoding, short genetic sequences that uniquely identify known species are generated and stored in public databases. By comparing DNA profiles from unknown organisms to the databases, researchers can identify biological specimens quickly, and construct genetic lineages. Combining the field data with the reconstructed genetic lineages, the authors discovered that five of these unnamed species were also wiped out.

"It's sadly ironic that we are discovering new species nearly as fast as we are losing them," said Andrew Crawford, former postdoctoral fellow at STRI and member of the Círculo Herpetológico de Panamá, now at the University of the Andes in Colombia. "Our DNA barcode data reveal new species even at this relatively well-studied site, yet the field sampling shows that many of these species new to science are already gone here."

An epidemic that wipes out a whole group of organisms is like the fire that burned the famous library of Alexandria. It destroys a huge amount of accumulated information about how life has coped with change in the past. Species surveys are like counting the number of different titles in the library, whereas a genetic survey is like counting the number of different words.

"When you lose the words, you lose the potential to make new books," said Lips, who directs the University of Maryland graduate program in Sustainable Development and Conservation Biology (CONS). "It's like the extinction of the dinosaurs. The areas where the disease has passed through are like graveyards; there's a void to be filled and we don't know what will happen as a result."

"This is the first time that we've used genetic barcodes -- DNA sequences unique to each living organism -- to characterize an entire amphibian community," said Eldredge Bermingham, STRI director and co-author. "STRI has also done barcoding on this scale for tropical trees on in our forest dynamics-monitoring plot in Panama. The before-and-after approach we took with the frogs tells us exactly what was lost to this deadly disease -- 33 percent of their evolutionary history."

The U.S. National Science Foundation and the Bay and Paul Foundation funded the field work for this study, which is published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Collection permits were provided by Panama's Environmental Authority, ANA

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by University of Maryland, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Journal Reference:
Andrew J. Crawford, Karen R. Lips and Eldredge Bermingham. Epidemic disease decimates amphibian abundance, species diversity and evolutionary history in the highlands of central Panama. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci, July 19, 2010
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Worry grows over white-nose syndrome's widening reach among bats

The baffling disease that's killed more than a million is found as far west as Oklahoma, where potentially infected animals share caves with migratory Mexican bats. It is expected to reach California.

June 20, 2010 | By Rachel Bernstein, Los Angeles Times

A disease killing more than a million with a mortality rate close to 100% continues to sweep across the country. First detected in New York in 2006, it is now found in 14 states in the East and South, leaving starvation and death in its wake, and is working its way westward.

This disease affects not people but hibernating bats. White-nose syndrome, so named because of the white fungus that grows on infected bats' noses, was discovered last month in Oklahoma, the farthest west it has been seen. Since it first appeared in a cave near Albany, N.Y., four years ago, more than a million bats have died, and its reach now extends northward to Ontario, Canada, and southward to Tennessee.

The discovery in Oklahoma is particularly worrisome because the bats there share caves with Mexican bats that migrate to and from Argentina. If the Mexican bats come in contact with the fungus, they could spread it widely.

"I'm afraid of what next year's map is going to look like," said biologist DeeAnn Reeder of Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, who has been researching the disease since it was discovered. "It got farther than I expected this year."

One possible nugget of good news: The fungus that is linked to the disease grows only in cold temperatures, so bats in milder climates with shorter winters may find a reprieve. "Everyone's crossing their fingers that there's a climate barrier," said Nina Fascione, executive director of the Texas-based nonprofit Bat Conservation International.

In 2008, two years after the disease was first identified, researchers linked the fungus to the syndrome, Geomyces destructans. Exactly how it kills the bats is still a mystery, although scientists know it infects the bats' skin and appears to interfere with the animals' hibernation patterns.

During winter, healthy hibernating bats arouse about once every two weeks and in the two hours or so that they are awake, use more calories than in the entire two weeks of hibernation. In contrast, bats with white-nose syndrome wake up as frequently as every four days, speeding the depletion of their precious energy stores and in some cases leading to starvation.

"We've got to connect these dots to figure out how you go from skin infection to death," said Reeder, who conducted the hibernation study.

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/20/science/la-sci-bats-20100620
(Submitted by Chad Arment)

Fatal Fungus In Frogs May Help Save Humans (Via HerpDigest)

Fatal Fungus In Frogs May Help Save Humans - Scientists Hope That Better Understanding Of The Broad Die-Off Of Amphibians Around The World Can Help Humans Avoid A Similar Fate

By Mark Grossi McClatchy Newspapers

Scientists have been alarmed for years about a mysterious fungus that wipes out frogs around the globe - even in wildlife sanctuaries like Yosemite and Sequoia-Kings Canyon national parks.

The fungus blitzes frog populations, allowing little chance for natural defenses to protect the amphibians, new research shows. Now scientists wonder if some new plague might do the same thing to humans.

"The thought of it makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck," said biologist Vance T. Vredenburg of San Francisco State University. "Emerging diseases for humans are cropping up much faster than before, and they might move like this one. We need to understand this."

Vredenburg and three other researchers have just finished two studies on the frog disease, called chytrid fungus, based on years of work in Yosemite and Sequoia-Kings Canyon. The studies will appear this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a research journal established in 1914.

The frog studies are part of the scientific community's push to better understand the broad die-off of amphibians around the world. Some experts believe it is part of a mass extinction of many animals.

More than 40 percent of the 6,500 known amphibian species have disappeared in the last few years, and chytrid fungus is only one cause. Pollution, pesticides, predatory fish, habitat loss and ultraviolet radiation also are involved. But the fungus may be the least understood.

Vredenburg said there may be ways to protect the frogs from the fungus, perhaps by removing as many as possible when the disease appears.

Scientists couldn't move fast enough in Sequoia-Kings Canyon, where nearly 5,600 male mountain yellow-legged frogs had been reduced in just a few seasons to fewer than 500 by 2008 at Barrett Lakes Basin. There were similar dramatic die-offs at Milestone and Sixty Lake basins in Sequoia-Kings Canyon.

But the news isn't all bad. Vredenburg said some species, such as tree frogs, did not suffer die-offs even though they were exposed to the fungus.

Another glimmer of hope: Though the disease killed most mountain yellow-legged frogs when it entered Yosemite years ago, some small groups have survived.

That could mean the disease moves more slowly after the frog populations have thinned out, said Ecologist Cheryl J. Briggs of the University of California at Santa Barbara. Maybe nature will be able to cope with this disease.

"I'm slightly more optimistic for the future," said Briggs, who was the lead author on one of the studies. "But what does rapid removal of so many frogs do to the rest of the aquatic community? That's a good question. We don't have an answer yet."


The 2- to 3-inch mountain yellow-legged frog can live more than 15 years in isolated streams and mountain lakes. At high elevation, it doesn't change from tadpole to frog in a single season, instead spending three or four winters under the ice in a lake.

In the Sierra, more than 90 percent of mountain yellow-legged frogs have disappeared over the last century. Losses have accelerated over the last decade as chytrid fungus has spread. Scientists do not know the origins of the disease.

Vredenburg said up to three-quarters of new human diseases these days are coming from animals, such as swine flu. He said that people could benefit as much as the frogs if researchers can learn ways to slow down diseases that move so quickly.

In Panama, for instance, scientists have removed frogs in areas where the disease is spreading. The frogs will be returned to the wild when the outbreak subsides.

In Sequoia-Kings, researchers next year will capture and treat infected frogs and tadpoles at individual lakes. An antifungal drug, something like the medication for athlete's foot, will be used.

Such treatments have proven successful with frogs, and scientists use gloves and sterile techniques to prevent the unintentional spread of the fungus.

Researchers also might try to grow beneficial bacteria on the skin of the frogs. The bacteria has killed the fungus in laboratory tests.

"We're not trying to get rid of the pathogen in nature," Vredenburg said. "The idea is to give these animals a chance to react with an immune response."

Fungus Kills About 90 Percent Of Connecticut's Bats

By RINKER BUCK | The Hartford Courant
March 18, 2009

White-nose syndrome, the mysterious plague that is decimating the Northeast's bats, killed off about 90 percent of Connecticut's bats over the winter and is now galloping across the country so quickly that it threatens the nation's — and probably the world's — largest bat populations in the American South.

Jenny Dickson, the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection wildlife biologist supervising the detection and control of white-nose syndrome in the state, said Tuesday that visits to two sample caves in Litchfield County in the past two weeks revealed veritable bat catacombs. Dickson's team of wildlife experts found thousands of dead bats floating like dead fish in standing water, or stacked on top of each other along the flat ledges of the cave walls.

"It was grim, and you don't have to be a scientist to realize the implications for the environment inside those caves," said Dickson. "This is a massive, unprecedented die-off, with significant potential impacts on nature, especially insect control."

Findings by Dickson's counterparts in nearby states paint an even more dire picture for Connecticut.

Bats are migratory, and most of Connecticut's bats fly here in the spring from hibernation caves containing hundreds of thousands of bats in the southern Adirondacks, the lower Hudson Valley, Vermont and the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. Scientists entering those caves since February have found 90 percent to 95 percent mortality rates, with some caves in New York having death rates approaching 100 percent. All told, scientists following white-nose syndrome have calculated that up to a million bats have already died in the Northeast states.

Scientists say that all bat species are vulnerable to the fungus. Dickson said Tuesday that the disease has hit hard among little brown bats and northern long-eared bats, which are the ones most commonly seen in Connecticut, but that it has spread to other species as well.

Combined with the losses of bats that hibernate in Connecticut, the deaths in neighboring states mean that bats fluttering over evening barbecues or swooping down to devour insects over cornfields will be a rare sight this summer.

The syndrome, first discovered in New York state in 2006, is a condition in which a white fungus coats the heads, legs and wings of hibernating bats. To fight the physiological effects of the fungus, bats deplete their fat reserves before the winter is over, fleeing from their caves in a desperate search for insects to eat. The ravenous, emaciated bats are then found lying in the snow or clinging to the sides of barns, and usually die before enough mosquitoes and moths hatch for them to eat.

Scientists have not been able to explain why the white fungus covering the bats, geomyces, appears in the first place, but the impact on the balance of nature is clear. Bats eat an average of more than 3,000 mosquitoes and moths apiece every night. A large die-off of the species will directly affect activities and industries that rely on natural insect control — recreation, dairy farming and horseback riding, among others.

Scientists working on white-nose syndrome say that they have detected no direct health threat to humans. But they do worry about indirect threats caused by insect-borne diseases, especially after an especially wet fall and winter that produces favorable conditions for mosquito breeding. The number of cases of such diseases as West Nile virus have been very low in Connecticut, but scientists do not know how a larger population of mosquitoes will affect human and animal health.

Dickson said that her team of scientists will be helped by public reports of bats flying in the daytime during the next two weeks, when there are not enough insects for bats to eat. The telltale white fungus on the bats will not be present, because it disappears when exposed to the sun and heat. Reports of daytime sightings, or other erratic behavior by bats, may be made to the DEP's number, 860-675-8130.

Since it was first detected in New York caves three years ago, white-nose syndrome has crossed state lines, probably carried by migrating bats themselves. Last year, the range of the plague had been restricted to the Albany, N.Y., area and western New England. But this year white-nose syndrome has been confirmed from New Hampshire to southwestern Virginia. The spread of the condition to Virginia especially concerns scientists.

Crops At Risk
Ecologist Merlin Tuttle of Texas is a bat expert and wildlife photographer who leads the battle to save the endangered gray bat.

"The number of bats that have died so far, which is probably over a million now, will be dwarfed by what is going to happen in the next few years," Tuttle said.

"Virginia is right on the border of perhaps the biggest bat hibernation areas in the world — Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky — where there are caves with such large populations of bats we can't even measure how many millions are in there. They spread from this area across vast ranges of the agricultural South. Mortality rates like those we are seeing in the states already hit by [white-nose syndrome] would be devastating for the national bat population."

Studies conducted by Tuttle and other scientists have documented the huge value that bats deliver to farming and forestry. Every June, over the vast corn and cotton fields of Texas, for example, millions of corn earworm moths migrate north from Mexico, descending at dusk to lay their eggs on crop fields. If left unchecked, these eggs would hatch within a few weeks, and then new moths would lay additional eggs, multiplying their scourge and smothering the crops.

Using Doppler radar, radio microphones beamed into the sky and feces studies of free-tailed bats, scientists have documented that "high-altitude foraging" by the bats intercepted most of the moths before they could land on crops, saving millions of acres of cotton and corn. One study concluded that the free-tail bats — there are at least 100 million of them in central Texas — consume more than 2 million pounds of insects every night.

But this balance-of-nature act is not restricted to Texas.

"We have the same corn, the same earworm moths, the same night-feeding by our bats right here in Connecticut," said Dickson. "And now that we have this huge mortality of bats, [white-nose syndrome] could have a severe impact on our crops, but we just don't know yet."

More Need For Pesticides
One scenario that worries wildlife scientists is increased use of pesticides. If farmers see that a crop-eating insect has landed on their fields, they call in crop-dusting planes or truck-sprayers right away, which then encourages other farmers to order spraying. Without enough bats to protect crops, farmers might be tempted this year to use more pesticides, a chemical chain-reaction that can affect people, wildlife and nearby streams, Tuttle and other experts said.

Even if the cause of white-nose syndrome is identified soon, the damage to the bat population has already been substantial.

"This is a species that reproduces very slowly and that lives very long for the wildlife world — many bats survive for 30 years," Dickson said.

"Each time you lose a bat, you're losing a very precious benefit to the environment. It will take generations to replenish this bat population."

•News Information specialist Cristina Bachetti contributed to this story.

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