White nose syndrome is a problem throughout the eastern half of the United States, so a research project being conducted in Tennessee could have a significant impact here in West Virginia and northward toward New York state, where the disease is devastating native bat populations.

From the Associated Press:

JELLICO, Tenn. (AP) — Researchers with the University of Tennessee and Pennsylvania’s Bucknell University recently visited Tennessee caves to collect 100 little brown bats for research aimed at combating white nose syndrome.

The fast-spreading fungal disease infects bats while they hibernate and has killed more than one million bats across the northeastern U.S.

“One of the issues for white nose syndrome research is that a lot of the work has to be done in labs where they can control the variables, so they have to have bats,” Cory Holliday, cave specialist for The Nature Conservancy told the Knoxville News Sentinel.  “In the Northeast, they’re literally running out of bats due to the epidemic, so they come here.”

Tennessee is home to 15 bat species, three of which are known to be infected with white nose syndrome, but so far the disease has not spread across the state as rapidly as was feared.

Amanda Janicki, a graduate student in the UT Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology was on the recent research expedition. She injected some of the bats with implants of antifungal medicine. Those bats were then rushed to Bucknell University, where they’d be infected with the white nose syndrome fungus.

“This is a clinical trial to see if it works,” Souza said. “If it comes down to species survival, we could bring the bats into captivity and treat them with the implants, which involves less handling than if we gave them daily injections. It’s having to treat bats on an individual basis, but at this point we’re willing to try anything.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 1, 2012 at 10:12 am and is filed under Conservation, Wildlife, Wildlife Diseases. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.