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The abandoned mining tunnels at the Ruffner Mountain Nature Reserve in Birmingham have not produced iron ore for more than 50 years, but the old man-made tunnels still provide a valuable living laboratory for researchers trying to fight the fungal disease called white nose syndrome. decimate North American bat populations.
The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation announced four grants totaling $ 1.1 million from public and private sources on Tuesday, allowing researchers to continue testing potential treatments for the disease.
White-nose syndrome occurs when bats come into contact with a fungus called Pseudogymnoascus destructans or PD in caves where they hibernate in winter. The fungus grows on bats and becomes an irritant, producing white lesions on the body and nose and disrupting their hibernation. Infected bats often leave their caves to look for food that is scarce in winter. Bat bats are often found dead near the entrances of infected caves.
Researchers are testing non-toxic anti-fungal treatments to eradicate the fungi from the caves where the bats live. The researchers use a specific wavelength of ultraviolet light, as well as propylene glycol sprays to treat the marked areas inside the mine tunnels where the mushroom responsible for the white nose has been detected. Researchers treated 30 areas labeled with UV light, 30 with propylene glycol and 30 with isopropyl alcohol, a foolproof fire to kill the fungus. Thirty more points will be marked but not treated as controls.
The artificial tunnels are perfect for testing techniques as there is no complex cave ecosystem that could be disturbed, and because there is still a working population of tricolor bats, one of the species that has been heavily impacted by the white nose throughout its range. . Wildlife experts say that the population of tricolor bats in Georgia is reduced to about 10% of what it was before the arrival of the white nose. Some populations have been completely eliminated.
Currently, researchers are using spot treatment to see how a single dose of ultraviolet light or chemical spray can fight the fungus for several months. In addition to Ruffner's tests, researchers work in caves in Arkansas and Canada.
"Right now, it's an on-site treatment, because we're trying to determine its effectiveness," said Winifred Frick, chief scientist at Bat Conservation International, one of the groups conducting the research. "We perform 30 repetitions of each type of treatment in three different mines with the idea that these results will tell us how to adapt it to wholesale treatments."
A research team including Frick, Nick Sharp from the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Pete Pattavina from the US Wildlife Service, graduate student Alyssa Stulburg and the Conservation Director of the Alabama Center Ruffner Mountain Nature's nature, Jamie Nobles, applied the treatments on Monday. The team will return to measure mold levels in treated and untreated areas in December and again in June and October 2019.
If the treatments are promising from an experimental point of view, researchers will look for ways to intensify treatments and possibly treat the caves where bats hibernate during the summer months, before entering the caves.
The grants were awarded through the Bats for the Future Fund (BFF), a public-private partnership between NFWF, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the US Forest Service, the Southern Company and the Foundation. Avangrid.
The bats of Birmingham at the edge of the white nose collapse
Unfortunately for the bats presently at Ruffner, experimental spot treatments will hardly help to protect the cave system as a whole. It is probably already too late to prevent the type of massive mortality that is usually observed in the years following the arrival of the white-headed mushroom in a new cave.
The white nose syndrome was first observed in Ruffner two years ago, and it usually takes two to three years for the expected population to collapse.
Sharp said the massive deaths had not yet been seen in Ruffner, but that they were probably on the horizon.
"We lost 70 to 90% of the tricolor bats in the caves that we observe in northern Alabama," Sharp said. "We expect to see this here at Ruffner. We have not seen a significant decline yet, but it is likely to happen. "
Sharp has counted 515 tricolor bats in the tunnels of the Ruffner mine in 2016, then 492 in 2017. It is too early for this year's survey, although a handful of bats are already settling in mining tunnels.
White-nose was first observed in North America in 2006 in northern New York State and has since spread to the mainland. The fungus, native to Europe, has now been found in 33 states and seven Canadian provinces.
Why worry about bats?
Bats play an important role in the ecosystem, mainly in the fight against pests. Most bats are insectivores, feeding on bugs that bother you in the yard or nibble on valuable crops.
Although some reports that bats eat thousands of mosquitoes a night seem to be greatly exaggerated, they offer valuable pest control services, especially for farmers. One poll estimated that bats provided more than $ 3 billion annually in pest control products in the United States.
"What I'm telling people is, 'If you like food, thank a bat,'" Sharp said. "All our bats in Alabama are insectivorous and eat billions of insects every night."
Can bats actually eat 1000 mosquitoes per hour? Look at pest control claims
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