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.

Comments

Re:Is a reduction

[ShanghaiBill]

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.
 

Excellent news

[__roo]

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.

Re:Is a reduction

[hey!]

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.