Team:Missouri Rolla
DEFENDING NORTH AMERICAN BATS FROM THE EMERGING WHITE-NOSE EPIDEMIC
Bats are a vital part of the ecosystem in the United States, providing immeasurable services in terms of pest control, fertilization, and pollination throughout their range. In 2007, a new bat disease was introduced to the United States and has since been spreading rapidly and causing mortality rates as high as 90% in some caves. This disease termed White Nose Syndrome (WNS), caused by Pseudogymnoascus destructans (formerly Geomyces destructans), works though several ways to disturb the bats' hibernation, metabolism, and skin integrity, ultimately leading to the death of most of the affected individuals.
Fighting this pathogen has proven to be quite difficult, very little research has been done on the immune response of bats and key aspects of this fungus, which is widespread throughout Europe, leaving scientists to play catch-up while millions of bats succumb to WNS. To make matters worse, it has been found that P. destructans is quite tolerant to changes in its food source, that bats may have a depressed immune response during hibernation, and that many compounds that could be used to fight the fungus are harmful to the native cave flora.
For the above reasons, we have decided to try to defend the bats rather than aggressively attack the fungus, hoping to slow the fungus and its effects to give the bats more time to make it through the winter and fight off the fungus naturally. We are currently exploring a volatile organic compound (VOC) that has been found to work cooperatively with other chemicals in fungistatic soils. We hope that this chemical alone will slow the growth of the fungus enough to allow bats to survive the winter, but not hinder it enough to force it to evolve to be resistant to this chemical. Concurrently, we are searching for compounds to inhibit the destruction of the bat's skin and a sensing mechanism to detect the presence of the fungus. We hope that with this three-pronged approach, we will be able to successfully defend bats while disturbing the natural habitat as little as possible.
Missouri cave photo by Lynn Dieter
Northern Long-Eared bat photo by Scott Bergeson