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Bats' White-Nose Syndrome May Be Cured
New submitter alabamatoy writes: Several news outlets are reporting that a common bacteria may be proving successful in curing "white-nose syndrome" which has been decimating the bat populations across North America. A new treatment using a common bacterium was developed in Missouri by Forest Service scientists Sybill Amelon and Dan Lindner, and Chris Cornelison of Georgia State University. The Nature Conservancy reports: "On May 20, 2015, Scientists and conservationists gathered outside the historic Mark Twain Cave Complex in Hannibal, Missouri, to release back into the wild some of the first bats successfully treated for deadly White-Nose Syndrome." Bats are a key player in the environment, keeping insect populations under control, especially mosquitoes.
of 10% really that significant? Bats are rodents, they breed prodigiously.
1. Bats are not rodents.
2. They don't breed prodigiously, often having on one offspring per year.
The big problem with the white fungus is that it keeps the bats awake, and makes it so they can't hibernate properly. So their body temperature stays high, which means they burn calories, which means they starve to death before springtime.
Too bad the bats don't have Red Nose syndrome. If they did, they could at least lead Santa's sleigh through the snow!
This is great news. For those who haven't been following it, white nose syndrome is an emergent disease affecting bats. It's caused by a fungus that grows on the skin of the animals, and has been killing millions of bats across many parts of the eastern United States (map). A decontamination protocol has been established for researchers and cavers who come into contact with the animals. This is the first really optimistic piece of news about the disease that I've seen.
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I just wanted to add, that I am a donor to the Nature Conservancy. They do a lot of good work, and I am happy to see that my money is helping to save these little critters. If you are looking for a worthy cause, you should check them out. Unlike some other environmental organizations (Sierra Club, Greenpeace, NRDC, etc.) they focus on pragmatic solutions rather than political lobbying, advertising, and public relations.
Hopefully the treatment will be amenable to some sort of relatively 'hands off' dispersal method. Veterinary care as all well and good(and, certainly, if it doesn't work in that environment, it probably doesn't work, so it's an obvious place to do R&D); but cave conditions are difficult enough that you won't make a dent in mortality unless you can 'dust' a cave, or set up aerosol dispersal at a cave entrance, or some other wholesale distribution mechanism. Even something that you have to spray directly on affected animals would be pretty tricky in a lot of these roosting environments.
I'm glad they do 'real work' with their money, but don't underestimate the value of a successful lobbying campaign. If the resources of the government can be brought to bear, they have the capability to make much bigger changes, even if they seem hobbled by compromises and special interests.
John
And the bacteria are fighting the effects of the fungus. Go reread the summary.
John
As ShanghaiBill says, Bats aren't rodents. I'll just add that bats and rodents are about as taxonomically unrelated as two mammals can possibly be.
Bats are more closely related to horses, bears, rhinos, even whales -- like most mammals they're members of the huge and diverse superorder Laurasiatheria. Rodents are in the much smaller superorder Euarchontoglires, the only non-extinct members of which are: rodents, rabbits, hares, pikas, tree shrews, flying lemurs, and the various primates.
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would reduce the number of diseases spread by them. Expect the Republicans to stop this. They want to increase the profits of the medical cartel. They'll fight this.
Bats eat up to 600 mosquitoes an hour.
This one may have gotten started with a study in which mosquitoes were released into a room full of bats while researchers counted how many they ate. The bats consumed about 10 per minute, or 600 per hour. But mosquitoes were the only insects in the room for the hungry bats to eat. Since then, studies have found that mosquitoes make up less than 1 percent of bat diets.
http://www.mosquitoworld.net/mosquito-myths/
Sure, they can be cute; however, in terms of human health, bats are reservoirs for rabies and various coronaviruses that affect humans. For example, a recent paper in Nature showed that SARS can go from some bats to humans without an intermediate host, and the same likely applies to MERS. Worse, ebola-infected bats have also been found. Then, there's this quote from wiki: "Bats harbor more viruses than rodents and are capable of spreading disease over a wider geographic area owing to their ability to fly and their migration and roosting patterns."
My question for the armchair epidemiologists here is to what extent this is outweighed by bats' feeding on mosquitoes (in the areas which this story concerns).
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
don't underestimate the value of a successful lobbying campaign.
For every lobbying campaign, there is an equal and opposite lobbying campaign. So a lot of money is spent to accomplish nothing. Why should I donate to an organization that is then going to lobby the government to raise my taxes so I can pay again? Instead of lobbying or lawsuits, the NC worked with the Forest Service, and a state university, provided funding to pull together experts with complementary skills, and solved a real problem. I consider that a much better use of my money that donating to the Sierra Club, so they can lobby the government to shut down nukes, so we can burn more coal, or sue power companies for building windmills that might kill a few birds.
Perhaps you attempted to troll, but it looks like ShanghaiBill sawed you off at the knees.
I imagined this as some sort of a disease that impacts their sonar system...
Until I re-read the subject.
Mosquitoes are an insignificant part (under 1%) of the diet of insectivorous bats. Bats prefer moths and wasps - many more calories per catch. Bats will eat mosquitoes, they just prefer just about anything else.
Don't worry about the bacteria getting out of hand. If necessary we'll kill them with a virus. Or gorillas.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If the resources of the government can be brought to bear ....
Then they will fuck everything up, and burn hundreds of millions of dollars in the process that could have gone into doing something real.
The problem will go unsolved and everyone living around the problem will be a hundred times worse off than they were before.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
we can work on a cure for politicians' "brown-nose syndrome"...
10%
Very few people nowadays the word "decimation" with it's original meaning, and I'm guessing the author didn't here either. Or rather, we should probably say that the word has evolved to mean "an arbitrarily large percentage" and not just 10%. I see that definition listed as #3 in Merriam-Webster, where the original meaning is #1. Those should probably be reversed now. #2, in case you're wondering, is related to taxation. Go figure.
I went to the article to find out that this fungus was apparently introduced ten years ago, which obviously seems to indicates human involvement, and explains why the bat have no natural defense. I think this also justifies human involvement in finding a solution.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
white nose syndrome might be devastating bat populations but unless white nose has been executing every tenth bat for cowardice it is not decimating the bat population.
The article referred to in the original news above is fluff. Here's the actual publication being used to effect a probiotic cure for the bats:
http://journals.plos.org/ploso...
Unfortunately, those wind turbines also kill bats (a friend of mine is just finishing her PhD on that work). The good news is that the folks that operate wind farms aren't in it to destroy wildlife, so they're amenable to doing things that help reduce the number of bat deaths.
(Bat deaths due to wind farms are especially painful, since they often kill bats that are migratory which wouldn't be affected by white nose syndrome.)
Then go look up the etymological fallacy.
Very few people nowadays the word "decimation" with it's original meaning, and I'm guessing the author didn't here either. Or rather, we should probably say that the word has evolved to mean "an arbitrarily large percentage" and not just 10%. I see that definition listed as #3 in Merriam-Webster, where the original meaning is #1. Those should probably be reversed now. #2, in case you're wondering, is related to taxation. Go figure.
Eradicating would have perhaps been a better word to use.
Fatality rate for the total bat population in affected caves is 90-100%. In many caves in Missouri, the bats are *gone*.
I went to the article to find out that this fungus was apparently introduced ten years ago, which obviously seems to indicates human involvement, and explains why the bat have no natural defense. I think this also justifies human involvement in finding a solution.
Very likely human involvement. The fungus is natural in European caves, and European bats can have the fungus on them without becoming colonized by it.
The fungus is thought to spread between American caves by people.
The Nature Conservancy does some really cool work, however, make no mistake, the bats that currently face potential extinction can't be saved by an organization such as them. It will require Government, and that usually requires an association with the devil (lobbyists)
Rodents are in the much smaller superorder Euarchontoglires, the only non-extinct members of which are: rodents, rabbits, hares, pikas, tree shrews, flying lemurs, and the various primates.
You forgot to specifically mention managers and politicians in that rodent group..... oh wait, my bad, there it is right at the end: primates.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
I read that as "white noise syndrome". Like, echolocation not working due to all society's ambient noise. Makes me want to go live in cave sometimes. Should have gone to more rock concerts in my misspent youth.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
The A/C with the citation describing how rare rabies actually is in bats hit the nail on the head. Too many people subscribe to the counterfactual mythology of bats being common vectors of disease.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
You're not alone. I also had to re-read the subject several times.
Bat rarely if ever eat mosquitoes. The specialize on moths.
White-nose has also affected bats in Middle and South America as well.
If they have discovered a treatment/cure and they're working with the Forest Service, then they've already engaged government and have effectively come up with a way to save bats. All without lobbying.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
but don't underestimate the value of a successful lobbying campaign.
What the government giveth, the government can taketh away.
And until property rights are taken away nothing beats putting your money into land purchases.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The Nature Conservancy does some really cool work, however, make no mistake, the bats that currently face potential extinction can't be saved by an organization such as them. It will require Government, and that usually requires an association with the devil (lobbyists)
The devil is right. The Government does some really cool work, but as long as we have vested interests that don't give a damn about critters, failure is only one mid-term election away.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
politicians are "low order" primates, And like many other low level primates they also throw their poo.
A great disaster has been averted!
http://www.mnn.com/earth-matte...
Didn't RTFA. I assume they got the bats to quit cocaine by putting them in rehab.
Thanks for this explanation. I was wondering earlier that if the problem was only as bad as "decimation", had scientists considered the various unintended consequences of this treatment? But seeing that the disease is likely anthropogenic, and that it is really wiping out entire populations, it sounds like this treatment can only be a Good Thing.
Very few people nowadays (sic) the contraction "it's" means it is. I'm guessing you meant "its", the possessive pronoun, and you missed an entire word too.
Next time, before putting on your Pedantor costume, check your own crap first.
politicians are "low order" primates, And like many other low level primates they also throw their poo.
I find this insulting to primates.
They can take my LifeAlert pendant when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
politicians are "low order" primates, And like many other low level primates they also throw their poo.
I find this insulting to primates.
.. so does the poo
The hard part is getting the bats to draw lots to see which one gets beat to death by the remaining 9/10.
What? You only wanted to go back _one_ previous definition of decimate?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I think this is the common mis-use of the term "decimate", unless the bat population is actually dropping by 10% a year. A cure is definitely a good thing for our little flying mammal friends.
Usually it's simple confusion between 'decimation' and 'devastation'.
" 'Decimation' means the same thing as 'devastation' except it sounds cooler."
Signed,
The Committee to Reduce the Number of Useful Words in the English Language
My God, it's Full of Source!
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Not at all surprising, given that all of my fungi-infested girl-friends tended to eat or otherwise use active bacteria-infused yogurt to treat their yeast infections (yeast being fungi).
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.