What is there to fear about the future of bats that isn't aboutHalloween?

Judith Martin - This is a very scary story, and it's all about bats and how their life and death might affect the rest of us.  Keep your eyes out for bats and keep reading, if you dare to discover what's next.



Bats across the North American continent are dying from a
fungal infection known as "white nose", exclusively among bats that
hibernate through the winter in caves the northeast and as far south as
Tennessee and as far west as Oklahoma,
report Marilynn Marchione of msnbc.com, and Madeline Bodin of Northern
Woodlands Magazine (March 1, 2010). 

"The infection grows on the nose, wings, and ears, and
one theory is that it irritates these membranes, causing bats to wake often
during hibernation and burn so much energy that they starve to death before
spring. But there are signs the fungus is directly damaging wings, which are
important for maintaining water balance and blood pressure control" --
Jeremy Coleman, head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service' response to the
problem. 

It could be tombstones for millions of bats if an effective
-- and relatively fast-working medicinal means to control the spread of the
fungus, and to treat the bats infected with it, cannot be found. 

As Marchione reports, Vishnu Chaturvedi and others at the
New York Department of Health state lab in Albany, the state capitol, testing
of six certain types of antifungal drugs have had good results. The problem is
how to disperse the drugs so that treatment of the bats, all of which hibernate
in caves during the winter. 

Marchione and Bodin both tell of how popular caves for bat
watchers are being closed so that the fungus is not spread by being carried
from one subterranean area to another on people's clothes. Nevertheless, the
population of a bat known modestly as the little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus)
has been so decimated that it is estimated that
only about 3 per cent of its population two years ago still survives in
the worst-affected areas. 

What is so important about bats? Most people actually care
little or nothing about bats, as written by Russell Peterson in his classic
book Silently by Night: About the Little-known but Fascinating World of Bats
(Longman's, 1964). The only time any interest is taken is when one of the
creatures flies in through an open window and a female voice shrieks, "Oh,
Lord, Henry, it's in the house!" The bat is dispatched with a good, solid
whack with a broom, and the cat is called in to carry out the carcass. 

Also as documented in numerous stories over the years in the
National Geographic  and other
nature-oriented magazines, bats have a unique role in nature. They are the
night shift of animals that eat flying insects like moths and beetles. Birds
keep the day shift. 

Madeline Bodin comments, "But scientists worry that the
bat's problems are part of a larger decline in ecosystem health. One important
aspect of white-nose syndrome...is that it is only one of several sights our
local environment has suffered in the last several years. White-nose syndrome
has been compared to the decline of amphibians and colony collapse disorder in
honey bees." (Northern Woodlands Magazine, March 1, 2010) 

The one comment that can be found in all reports about the
effects of this fungus on bats is simply this:
"It's scary". 

And the scariness has nothing to do with Halloween.