Re: [Texascavers] Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS
Yes, G. destructans has been known for some time to cause the fungal outbreaks seen on infected bats, but the real question was whether the fungus caused this in otherwise healthy bats, or whether it was an adventitious infection that took hold because the bats' immune systems were otherwise compromised (due to insecticide residues, environmental stresses, other disease, etc.). This study used normal, healthy bats and found that they contracted WNS from the fungus, which is why they say it has been proven to be the primary cause. This is an important distinction to make, because it narrows down the search for methods of prevention and/or cure. Mark Minton At 09:17 AM 10/27/2011, philipm...@juno.com wrote: From what I read below, I don't see that the study confirmed G. destructans as entirely responsible for WNS. First two caveats: I am not a bat biologist and I did not read the article in Nature2. That being said, WNS has at least two symptoms, the white fungal growth on and the death of bats. Syndromes typically are thought to have multiple causes. It was my understanding that the white fungal growth had already been identified as G. destructans. This study does confirm bat to bat transmission of the fungus. There have been a number of bats found by mist netting with lesions from the fungus that did not die. However, it is my understanding that in North America, there is a difference between the dead bats and the bats that survive infection from the fungus and that is that the dead bats have no chitinase producing bacteria in their guts and that bats that survive the fungus do. If that is the case, then there may well be multiple causes of WNS, the fungus as an irritant that wakes the bats from torpor, and whatever is killing off the chitinase producing bacteria. If there were not the low body weight from insufficient protein digestion, is that enough to cause death? According to this study, in 102 days it resulted in no mortality. That seems like a long time without any mortality. I think it is unfortunate that the study was not run as long as the northeastern hibernation season. It seems to me that saying that the culprit has been found without being able to attribute all of the symptoms is overconfident, premature, and smacks of assuming one's conclusions. This study only accounted for one of the symptoms of WNS and not the one I think most of us think is the most important. Philip Moss http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111026/full/news.2011.613.html Culprit behind bat scourge confirmed A cold-loving fungus is behind an epidemic decimating bat populations in North America. By: Susan Young Researchers have confirmed that a recently identified fungus is responsible for white-nose syndrome, a deadly disease that is sweeping through bat colonies in eastern North America. The fungus, Geomyces destructans, infects the skin of hibernating bats, causing lesions on the animals' wings and a fluffy white outgrowth on the muzzle. When white-nose syndrome takes hold of a hibernating colony, more than 90% of the bats can die (see Disease epidemic killing only US bats). The disease was first documented in February 2006 in a cave in New York, and has spread to at least 16 other US states and four Canadian provinces. The culpability of G. destructans for this sudden outbreak was thrown into question when the fungus was found on healthy bats in Europe, where it is not associated with the grim mortality levels seen in North America1. Some proposed that the fungus was not the primary cause of the catastrophic die offs, and that another factor such as an undetected virus must bt be to blame. But a study published today in Nature2 reveals that G. destructans is indeed guilty. "The fungus alone is sufficient to recreate all the pathology diagnostic for the disease," says David Blehert, a microbiologist at the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, and senior author on the report. Bat-to-bat spread Blehert and his colleagues collected healthy little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) from Wisconsin, which is well beyond the known range of white-nose syndrome. They infected the bats by direct administration of G. destructans spores to the skin or by contact with infected bats from New York. By the end of the 102-day experiment, the tell-tale white fungus was growing on the muzzles and wings of all of the directly infected Wisconsin bats and 16 of the 18 exposed to sick bats. This is the first experimental evidence that white-nose syndrome can be passed from bat to bat, and is very worrying from a conservation point of view because bats huddle together in large numbers in caves and mate in large swarms, says Emma Teeling, a bat biologist at University College Dublin in Ireland. "If a bat has this fungus on them, it's going to spread quickly throughout the population," says Teeling, who was not involved with the study. "It's li
Re: [Texascavers] Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS
Yes, G. destructans has been known for some time to cause the fungal outbreaks seen on infected bats, but the real question was whether the fungus caused this in otherwise healthy bats, or whether it was an adventitious infection that took hold because the bats' immune systems were otherwise compromised (due to insecticide residues, environmental stresses, other disease, etc.). This study used normal, healthy bats and found that they contracted WNS from the fungus, which is why they say it has been proven to be the primary cause. This is an important distinction to make, because it narrows down the search for methods of prevention and/or cure. Mark Minton At 09:17 AM 10/27/2011, philipm...@juno.com wrote: From what I read below, I don't see that the study confirmed G. destructans as entirely responsible for WNS. First two caveats: I am not a bat biologist and I did not read the article in Nature2. That being said, WNS has at least two symptoms, the white fungal growth on and the death of bats. Syndromes typically are thought to have multiple causes. It was my understanding that the white fungal growth had already been identified as G. destructans. This study does confirm bat to bat transmission of the fungus. There have been a number of bats found by mist netting with lesions from the fungus that did not die. However, it is my understanding that in North America, there is a difference between the dead bats and the bats that survive infection from the fungus and that is that the dead bats have no chitinase producing bacteria in their guts and that bats that survive the fungus do. If that is the case, then there may well be multiple causes of WNS, the fungus as an irritant that wakes the bats from torpor, and whatever is killing off the chitinase producing bacteria. If there were not the low body weight from insufficient protein digestion, is that enough to cause death? According to this study, in 102 days it resulted in no mortality. That seems like a long time without any mortality. I think it is unfortunate that the study was not run as long as the northeastern hibernation season. It seems to me that saying that the culprit has been found without being able to attribute all of the symptoms is overconfident, premature, and smacks of assuming one's conclusions. This study only accounted for one of the symptoms of WNS and not the one I think most of us think is the most important. Philip Moss http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111026/full/news.2011.613.html Culprit behind bat scourge confirmed A cold-loving fungus is behind an epidemic decimating bat populations in North America. By: Susan Young Researchers have confirmed that a recently identified fungus is responsible for white-nose syndrome, a deadly disease that is sweeping through bat colonies in eastern North America. The fungus, Geomyces destructans, infects the skin of hibernating bats, causing lesions on the animals' wings and a fluffy white outgrowth on the muzzle. When white-nose syndrome takes hold of a hibernating colony, more than 90% of the bats can die (see Disease epidemic killing only US bats). The disease was first documented in February 2006 in a cave in New York, and has spread to at least 16 other US states and four Canadian provinces. The culpability of G. destructans for this sudden outbreak was thrown into question when the fungus was found on healthy bats in Europe, where it is not associated with the grim mortality levels seen in North America1. Some proposed that the fungus was not the primary cause of the catastrophic die offs, and that another factor such as an undetected virus must bt be to blame. But a study published today in Nature2 reveals that G. destructans is indeed guilty. "The fungus alone is sufficient to recreate all the pathology diagnostic for the disease," says David Blehert, a microbiologist at the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, and senior author on the report. Bat-to-bat spread Blehert and his colleagues collected healthy little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) from Wisconsin, which is well beyond the known range of white-nose syndrome. They infected the bats by direct administration of G. destructans spores to the skin or by contact with infected bats from New York. By the end of the 102-day experiment, the tell-tale white fungus was growing on the muzzles and wings of all of the directly infected Wisconsin bats and 16 of the 18 exposed to sick bats. This is the first experimental evidence that white-nose syndrome can be passed from bat to bat, and is very worrying from a conservation point of view because bats huddle together in large numbers in caves and mate in large swarms, says Emma Teeling, a bat biologist at University College Dublin in Ireland. "If a bat has this fungus on them, it's going to spread quickly throughout the population," says Teeling, who was not involved with the study. "It's li
Re: [Texascavers] Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS
Yes, G. destructans has been known for some time to cause the fungal outbreaks seen on infected bats, but the real question was whether the fungus caused this in otherwise healthy bats, or whether it was an adventitious infection that took hold because the bats' immune systems were otherwise compromised (due to insecticide residues, environmental stresses, other disease, etc.). This study used normal, healthy bats and found that they contracted WNS from the fungus, which is why they say it has been proven to be the primary cause. This is an important distinction to make, because it narrows down the search for methods of prevention and/or cure. Mark Minton At 09:17 AM 10/27/2011, philipm...@juno.com wrote: From what I read below, I don't see that the study confirmed G. destructans as entirely responsible for WNS. First two caveats: I am not a bat biologist and I did not read the article in Nature2. That being said, WNS has at least two symptoms, the white fungal growth on and the death of bats. Syndromes typically are thought to have multiple causes. It was my understanding that the white fungal growth had already been identified as G. destructans. This study does confirm bat to bat transmission of the fungus. There have been a number of bats found by mist netting with lesions from the fungus that did not die. However, it is my understanding that in North America, there is a difference between the dead bats and the bats that survive infection from the fungus and that is that the dead bats have no chitinase producing bacteria in their guts and that bats that survive the fungus do. If that is the case, then there may well be multiple causes of WNS, the fungus as an irritant that wakes the bats from torpor, and whatever is killing off the chitinase producing bacteria. If there were not the low body weight from insufficient protein digestion, is that enough to cause death? According to this study, in 102 days it resulted in no mortality. That seems like a long time without any mortality. I think it is unfortunate that the study was not run as long as the northeastern hibernation season. It seems to me that saying that the culprit has been found without being able to attribute all of the symptoms is overconfident, premature, and smacks of assuming one's conclusions. This study only accounted for one of the symptoms of WNS and not the one I think most of us think is the most important. Philip Moss http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111026/full/news.2011.613.html Culprit behind bat scourge confirmed A cold-loving fungus is behind an epidemic decimating bat populations in North America. By: Susan Young Researchers have confirmed that a recently identified fungus is responsible for white-nose syndrome, a deadly disease that is sweeping through bat colonies in eastern North America. The fungus, Geomyces destructans, infects the skin of hibernating bats, causing lesions on the animals' wings and a fluffy white outgrowth on the muzzle. When white-nose syndrome takes hold of a hibernating colony, more than 90% of the bats can die (see Disease epidemic killing only US bats). The disease was first documented in February 2006 in a cave in New York, and has spread to at least 16 other US states and four Canadian provinces. The culpability of G. destructans for this sudden outbreak was thrown into question when the fungus was found on healthy bats in Europe, where it is not associated with the grim mortality levels seen in North America1. Some proposed that the fungus was not the primary cause of the catastrophic die offs, and that another factor such as an undetected virus must bt be to blame. But a study published today in Nature2 reveals that G. destructans is indeed guilty. "The fungus alone is sufficient to recreate all the pathology diagnostic for the disease," says David Blehert, a microbiologist at the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, and senior author on the report. Bat-to-bat spread Blehert and his colleagues collected healthy little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) from Wisconsin, which is well beyond the known range of white-nose syndrome. They infected the bats by direct administration of G. destructans spores to the skin or by contact with infected bats from New York. By the end of the 102-day experiment, the tell-tale white fungus was growing on the muzzles and wings of all of the directly infected Wisconsin bats and 16 of the 18 exposed to sick bats. This is the first experimental evidence that white-nose syndrome can be passed from bat to bat, and is very worrying from a conservation point of view because bats huddle together in large numbers in caves and mate in large swarms, says Emma Teeling, a bat biologist at University College Dublin in Ireland. "If a bat has this fungus on them, it's going to spread quickly throughout the population," says Teeling, who was not involved with the study. "It's li
Re: [Texascavers] Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS
Hi Diana! I really appreciate you outlining the timeline for getting a grant, and for getting a paper published. Most people have no idea how long just the grant funding process can take. There's a lot of grant money out there for those who are persistent and patient. julia -Original Message- From: Diana Tomchick To: Cc: ; Sent: Thu, Oct 27, 2011 11:02 am Subject: Re: [Texascavers] Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS One needs only read the original Nature paper, and a simple knowledge of the nature of academic research to understand why it might take 5 years for such a "simple and obvious" experiment to be conducted. Let's consider several points: 1) To obtain grant funding to conduct such an experiment, it takes a certain amount of time for funding agencies to decide that they will even offer the chance for investigators to compete for the funds. One need only think about how long it took the NIH to decide that research funds should be allocated to investigate HIV/AIDS to realize that the few years that it took for funds to be made available to study this fungal scourge in bats was expedited. So it's probably safe to assume it took at least one year for agencies to announce they had funds available for such research. 2) Once the announcement of funds is made publicly available, then there is a deadline announced (typically 6-12 months in advance) for receipt of the grant application. This gives investigators the time to write the grant. Do not think that this is time wasted; in fact, the process of grant writing is an important one, as it gives the investigator the time to think hard about what is the best experiment(s) to conduct to answer the research question. The investigator needs to provide evidence that the proposed work can be carried out in the proposed time frame; this includes evidence of support from the institution (do you have the space to house bats for an extended amount of time, and will they be housed and treated in a humane way?) and confirmation from expert collaborators. 3) Once the grants are received, it takes time to review the grants before the money can be awarded. Depending upon the agency, this can take an additional 6 months to one year. 4) So now, after 2-3 years, you have your money to conduct the experiment. The proposed experiment will take 102 days, but that is just considering the amount of time needed to keep the infected bats. Factor in an additional 3-6 months prior to receiving the bats to get the lab ready to house the animals and conduct the research on them. Remember, any research that uses animals takes a LOT more money, time and institutional oversight than ordinary lab research. 5) Now that the 102 days of bat infection is finished, we still have a lot of data that needs to be analyzed and a paper needs to be written. Since there are a lot of collaborators (I count eleven authors on the paper from nine different institutions, both academic and governmental) this may take longer than you would think--everyone is juggling multiple projects, so getting data together for one paper is a bit like herding cats. Of course, the opportunity to publish in a prestigious journal such as Nature tends to focus the efforts of most people on this task, but still...drafts of the paper need to be distributed to all eleven people, and everyone needs to have their say in the content of the paper. While this process takes a long time, in my experience it always results in a much improved version of the manuscript. Let's say this process took 6 months. 6) The paper is then submitted to the journal, and the editor assigned to the paper needs to decide whether it's worthy to send out for peer review. Depending upon the editor, this process could be short (less than a week) or not so short (several weeks). Hurrah, it's going to be sent out for peer review! Now the authors wait to see if 3 anonymous (to the authors, not to the editor) experts in the field decide that their work should be published in the journal. After 1-2 months, the word comes back from the editor--the reviewers liked the paper, but they think there could be some improvements. Here are their suggestions, which could be minor ones (changes in figures, wording of certain sections, include some additional references) or major (you need to conduct a few more experiments or improved data analysis). The corrections could take as little as a few days, or several months. 7) The authors submit the revised paper back to the journal. Now there is a span of several weeks before the page proofs are returned. This is the last chance the authors have to locate any mistakes (typically spelling and formatting problems). Once the page proofs are accepted, then there may be a span of a week or two before the paper appears on the Nature web site, and an additional s
Re: [Texascavers] Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS
Hi Diana! I really appreciate you outlining the timeline for getting a grant, and for getting a paper published. Most people have no idea how long just the grant funding process can take. There's a lot of grant money out there for those who are persistent and patient. julia -Original Message- From: Diana Tomchick To: Cc: ; Sent: Thu, Oct 27, 2011 11:02 am Subject: Re: [Texascavers] Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS One needs only read the original Nature paper, and a simple knowledge of the nature of academic research to understand why it might take 5 years for such a "simple and obvious" experiment to be conducted. Let's consider several points: 1) To obtain grant funding to conduct such an experiment, it takes a certain amount of time for funding agencies to decide that they will even offer the chance for investigators to compete for the funds. One need only think about how long it took the NIH to decide that research funds should be allocated to investigate HIV/AIDS to realize that the few years that it took for funds to be made available to study this fungal scourge in bats was expedited. So it's probably safe to assume it took at least one year for agencies to announce they had funds available for such research. 2) Once the announcement of funds is made publicly available, then there is a deadline announced (typically 6-12 months in advance) for receipt of the grant application. This gives investigators the time to write the grant. Do not think that this is time wasted; in fact, the process of grant writing is an important one, as it gives the investigator the time to think hard about what is the best experiment(s) to conduct to answer the research question. The investigator needs to provide evidence that the proposed work can be carried out in the proposed time frame; this includes evidence of support from the institution (do you have the space to house bats for an extended amount of time, and will they be housed and treated in a humane way?) and confirmation from expert collaborators. 3) Once the grants are received, it takes time to review the grants before the money can be awarded. Depending upon the agency, this can take an additional 6 months to one year. 4) So now, after 2-3 years, you have your money to conduct the experiment. The proposed experiment will take 102 days, but that is just considering the amount of time needed to keep the infected bats. Factor in an additional 3-6 months prior to receiving the bats to get the lab ready to house the animals and conduct the research on them. Remember, any research that uses animals takes a LOT more money, time and institutional oversight than ordinary lab research. 5) Now that the 102 days of bat infection is finished, we still have a lot of data that needs to be analyzed and a paper needs to be written. Since there are a lot of collaborators (I count eleven authors on the paper from nine different institutions, both academic and governmental) this may take longer than you would think--everyone is juggling multiple projects, so getting data together for one paper is a bit like herding cats. Of course, the opportunity to publish in a prestigious journal such as Nature tends to focus the efforts of most people on this task, but still...drafts of the paper need to be distributed to all eleven people, and everyone needs to have their say in the content of the paper. While this process takes a long time, in my experience it always results in a much improved version of the manuscript. Let's say this process took 6 months. 6) The paper is then submitted to the journal, and the editor assigned to the paper needs to decide whether it's worthy to send out for peer review. Depending upon the editor, this process could be short (less than a week) or not so short (several weeks). Hurrah, it's going to be sent out for peer review! Now the authors wait to see if 3 anonymous (to the authors, not to the editor) experts in the field decide that their work should be published in the journal. After 1-2 months, the word comes back from the editor--the reviewers liked the paper, but they think there could be some improvements. Here are their suggestions, which could be minor ones (changes in figures, wording of certain sections, include some additional references) or major (you need to conduct a few more experiments or improved data analysis). The corrections could take as little as a few days, or several months. 7) The authors submit the revised paper back to the journal. Now there is a span of several weeks before the page proofs are returned. This is the last chance the authors have to locate any mistakes (typically spelling and formatting problems). Once the page proofs are accepted, then there may be a span of a week or two before the paper appears on the Nature web site, and an additional s
Re: [Texascavers] Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS
Hi Diana! I really appreciate you outlining the timeline for getting a grant, and for getting a paper published. Most people have no idea how long just the grant funding process can take. There's a lot of grant money out there for those who are persistent and patient. julia -Original Message- From: Diana Tomchick To: Cc: ; Sent: Thu, Oct 27, 2011 11:02 am Subject: Re: [Texascavers] Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS One needs only read the original Nature paper, and a simple knowledge of the nature of academic research to understand why it might take 5 years for such a "simple and obvious" experiment to be conducted. Let's consider several points: 1) To obtain grant funding to conduct such an experiment, it takes a certain amount of time for funding agencies to decide that they will even offer the chance for investigators to compete for the funds. One need only think about how long it took the NIH to decide that research funds should be allocated to investigate HIV/AIDS to realize that the few years that it took for funds to be made available to study this fungal scourge in bats was expedited. So it's probably safe to assume it took at least one year for agencies to announce they had funds available for such research. 2) Once the announcement of funds is made publicly available, then there is a deadline announced (typically 6-12 months in advance) for receipt of the grant application. This gives investigators the time to write the grant. Do not think that this is time wasted; in fact, the process of grant writing is an important one, as it gives the investigator the time to think hard about what is the best experiment(s) to conduct to answer the research question. The investigator needs to provide evidence that the proposed work can be carried out in the proposed time frame; this includes evidence of support from the institution (do you have the space to house bats for an extended amount of time, and will they be housed and treated in a humane way?) and confirmation from expert collaborators. 3) Once the grants are received, it takes time to review the grants before the money can be awarded. Depending upon the agency, this can take an additional 6 months to one year. 4) So now, after 2-3 years, you have your money to conduct the experiment. The proposed experiment will take 102 days, but that is just considering the amount of time needed to keep the infected bats. Factor in an additional 3-6 months prior to receiving the bats to get the lab ready to house the animals and conduct the research on them. Remember, any research that uses animals takes a LOT more money, time and institutional oversight than ordinary lab research. 5) Now that the 102 days of bat infection is finished, we still have a lot of data that needs to be analyzed and a paper needs to be written. Since there are a lot of collaborators (I count eleven authors on the paper from nine different institutions, both academic and governmental) this may take longer than you would think--everyone is juggling multiple projects, so getting data together for one paper is a bit like herding cats. Of course, the opportunity to publish in a prestigious journal such as Nature tends to focus the efforts of most people on this task, but still...drafts of the paper need to be distributed to all eleven people, and everyone needs to have their say in the content of the paper. While this process takes a long time, in my experience it always results in a much improved version of the manuscript. Let's say this process took 6 months. 6) The paper is then submitted to the journal, and the editor assigned to the paper needs to decide whether it's worthy to send out for peer review. Depending upon the editor, this process could be short (less than a week) or not so short (several weeks). Hurrah, it's going to be sent out for peer review! Now the authors wait to see if 3 anonymous (to the authors, not to the editor) experts in the field decide that their work should be published in the journal. After 1-2 months, the word comes back from the editor--the reviewers liked the paper, but they think there could be some improvements. Here are their suggestions, which could be minor ones (changes in figures, wording of certain sections, include some additional references) or major (you need to conduct a few more experiments or improved data analysis). The corrections could take as little as a few days, or several months. 7) The authors submit the revised paper back to the journal. Now there is a span of several weeks before the page proofs are returned. This is the last chance the authors have to locate any mistakes (typically spelling and formatting problems). Once the page proofs are accepted, then there may be a span of a week or two before the paper appears on the Nature web site, and an additional s
Re: [Texascavers] Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS
One needs only read the original Nature paper, and a simple knowledge of the nature of academic research to understand why it might take 5 years for such a "simple and obvious" experiment to be conducted. Let's consider several points: 1) To obtain grant funding to conduct such an experiment, it takes a certain amount of time for funding agencies to decide that they will even offer the chance for investigators to compete for the funds. One need only think about how long it took the NIH to decide that research funds should be allocated to investigate HIV/AIDS to realize that the few years that it took for funds to be made available to study this fungal scourge in bats was expedited. So it's probably safe to assume it took at least one year for agencies to announce they had funds available for such research. 2) Once the announcement of funds is made publicly available, then there is a deadline announced (typically 6-12 months in advance) for receipt of the grant application. This gives investigators the time to write the grant. Do not think that this is time wasted; in fact, the process of grant writing is an important one, as it gives the investigator the time to think hard about what is the best experiment(s) to conduct to answer the research question. The investigator needs to provide evidence that the proposed work can be carried out in the proposed time frame; this includes evidence of support from the institution (do you have the space to house bats for an extended amount of time, and will they be housed and treated in a humane way?) and confirmation from expert collaborators. 3) Once the grants are received, it takes time to review the grants before the money can be awarded. Depending upon the agency, this can take an additional 6 months to one year. 4) So now, after 2-3 years, you have your money to conduct the experiment. The proposed experiment will take 102 days, but that is just considering the amount of time needed to keep the infected bats. Factor in an additional 3-6 months prior to receiving the bats to get the lab ready to house the animals and conduct the research on them. Remember, any research that uses animals takes a LOT more money, time and institutional oversight than ordinary lab research. 5) Now that the 102 days of bat infection is finished, we still have a lot of data that needs to be analyzed and a paper needs to be written. Since there are a lot of collaborators (I count eleven authors on the paper from nine different institutions, both academic and governmental) this may take longer than you would think--everyone is juggling multiple projects, so getting data together for one paper is a bit like herding cats. Of course, the opportunity to publish in a prestigious journal such as Nature tends to focus the efforts of most people on this task, but still...drafts of the paper need to be distributed to all eleven people, and everyone needs to have their say in the content of the paper. While this process takes a long time, in my experience it always results in a much improved version of the manuscript. Let's say this process took 6 months. 6) The paper is then submitted to the journal, and the editor assigned to the paper needs to decide whether it's worthy to send out for peer review. Depending upon the editor, this process could be short (less than a week) or not so short (several weeks). Hurrah, it's going to be sent out for peer review! Now the authors wait to see if 3 anonymous (to the authors, not to the editor) experts in the field decide that their work should be published in the journal. After 1-2 months, the word comes back from the editor--the reviewers liked the paper, but they think there could be some improvements. Here are their suggestions, which could be minor ones (changes in figures, wording of certain sections, include some additional references) or major (you need to conduct a few more experiments or improved data analysis). The corrections could take as little as a few days, or several months. 7) The authors submit the revised paper back to the journal. Now there is a span of several weeks before the page proofs are returned. This is the last chance the authors have to locate any mistakes (typically spelling and formatting problems). Once the page proofs are accepted, then there may be a span of a week or two before the paper appears on the Nature web site, and an additional span of 2-6 weeks before it appears in print. This paper is now on the web site, but not yet available in the printed journal that appears in your local institutional library. So I'm not at all surprised that it might take 5 years for this work to be published. I am surprised that the subject line to this thread reads "Study 'confirms' Geomyces..."--why the quote around the word "confirms"? According to Koch's postulates*, the confirmation is in this Nature paper, with the caveat that the bats need to be hibernating (and thu
Re: [Texascavers] Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS
One needs only read the original Nature paper, and a simple knowledge of the nature of academic research to understand why it might take 5 years for such a "simple and obvious" experiment to be conducted. Let's consider several points: 1) To obtain grant funding to conduct such an experiment, it takes a certain amount of time for funding agencies to decide that they will even offer the chance for investigators to compete for the funds. One need only think about how long it took the NIH to decide that research funds should be allocated to investigate HIV/AIDS to realize that the few years that it took for funds to be made available to study this fungal scourge in bats was expedited. So it's probably safe to assume it took at least one year for agencies to announce they had funds available for such research. 2) Once the announcement of funds is made publicly available, then there is a deadline announced (typically 6-12 months in advance) for receipt of the grant application. This gives investigators the time to write the grant. Do not think that this is time wasted; in fact, the process of grant writing is an important one, as it gives the investigator the time to think hard about what is the best experiment(s) to conduct to answer the research question. The investigator needs to provide evidence that the proposed work can be carried out in the proposed time frame; this includes evidence of support from the institution (do you have the space to house bats for an extended amount of time, and will they be housed and treated in a humane way?) and confirmation from expert collaborators. 3) Once the grants are received, it takes time to review the grants before the money can be awarded. Depending upon the agency, this can take an additional 6 months to one year. 4) So now, after 2-3 years, you have your money to conduct the experiment. The proposed experiment will take 102 days, but that is just considering the amount of time needed to keep the infected bats. Factor in an additional 3-6 months prior to receiving the bats to get the lab ready to house the animals and conduct the research on them. Remember, any research that uses animals takes a LOT more money, time and institutional oversight than ordinary lab research. 5) Now that the 102 days of bat infection is finished, we still have a lot of data that needs to be analyzed and a paper needs to be written. Since there are a lot of collaborators (I count eleven authors on the paper from nine different institutions, both academic and governmental) this may take longer than you would think--everyone is juggling multiple projects, so getting data together for one paper is a bit like herding cats. Of course, the opportunity to publish in a prestigious journal such as Nature tends to focus the efforts of most people on this task, but still...drafts of the paper need to be distributed to all eleven people, and everyone needs to have their say in the content of the paper. While this process takes a long time, in my experience it always results in a much improved version of the manuscript. Let's say this process took 6 months. 6) The paper is then submitted to the journal, and the editor assigned to the paper needs to decide whether it's worthy to send out for peer review. Depending upon the editor, this process could be short (less than a week) or not so short (several weeks). Hurrah, it's going to be sent out for peer review! Now the authors wait to see if 3 anonymous (to the authors, not to the editor) experts in the field decide that their work should be published in the journal. After 1-2 months, the word comes back from the editor--the reviewers liked the paper, but they think there could be some improvements. Here are their suggestions, which could be minor ones (changes in figures, wording of certain sections, include some additional references) or major (you need to conduct a few more experiments or improved data analysis). The corrections could take as little as a few days, or several months. 7) The authors submit the revised paper back to the journal. Now there is a span of several weeks before the page proofs are returned. This is the last chance the authors have to locate any mistakes (typically spelling and formatting problems). Once the page proofs are accepted, then there may be a span of a week or two before the paper appears on the Nature web site, and an additional span of 2-6 weeks before it appears in print. This paper is now on the web site, but not yet available in the printed journal that appears in your local institutional library. So I'm not at all surprised that it might take 5 years for this work to be published. I am surprised that the subject line to this thread reads "Study 'confirms' Geomyces..."--why the quote around the word "confirms"? According to Koch's postulates*, the confirmation is in this Nature paper, with the caveat that the bats need to be hibernating (and thu
Re: [Texascavers] Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS
One needs only read the original Nature paper, and a simple knowledge of the nature of academic research to understand why it might take 5 years for such a "simple and obvious" experiment to be conducted. Let's consider several points: 1) To obtain grant funding to conduct such an experiment, it takes a certain amount of time for funding agencies to decide that they will even offer the chance for investigators to compete for the funds. One need only think about how long it took the NIH to decide that research funds should be allocated to investigate HIV/AIDS to realize that the few years that it took for funds to be made available to study this fungal scourge in bats was expedited. So it's probably safe to assume it took at least one year for agencies to announce they had funds available for such research. 2) Once the announcement of funds is made publicly available, then there is a deadline announced (typically 6-12 months in advance) for receipt of the grant application. This gives investigators the time to write the grant. Do not think that this is time wasted; in fact, the process of grant writing is an important one, as it gives the investigator the time to think hard about what is the best experiment(s) to conduct to answer the research question. The investigator needs to provide evidence that the proposed work can be carried out in the proposed time frame; this includes evidence of support from the institution (do you have the space to house bats for an extended amount of time, and will they be housed and treated in a humane way?) and confirmation from expert collaborators. 3) Once the grants are received, it takes time to review the grants before the money can be awarded. Depending upon the agency, this can take an additional 6 months to one year. 4) So now, after 2-3 years, you have your money to conduct the experiment. The proposed experiment will take 102 days, but that is just considering the amount of time needed to keep the infected bats. Factor in an additional 3-6 months prior to receiving the bats to get the lab ready to house the animals and conduct the research on them. Remember, any research that uses animals takes a LOT more money, time and institutional oversight than ordinary lab research. 5) Now that the 102 days of bat infection is finished, we still have a lot of data that needs to be analyzed and a paper needs to be written. Since there are a lot of collaborators (I count eleven authors on the paper from nine different institutions, both academic and governmental) this may take longer than you would think--everyone is juggling multiple projects, so getting data together for one paper is a bit like herding cats. Of course, the opportunity to publish in a prestigious journal such as Nature tends to focus the efforts of most people on this task, but still...drafts of the paper need to be distributed to all eleven people, and everyone needs to have their say in the content of the paper. While this process takes a long time, in my experience it always results in a much improved version of the manuscript. Let's say this process took 6 months. 6) The paper is then submitted to the journal, and the editor assigned to the paper needs to decide whether it's worthy to send out for peer review. Depending upon the editor, this process could be short (less than a week) or not so short (several weeks). Hurrah, it's going to be sent out for peer review! Now the authors wait to see if 3 anonymous (to the authors, not to the editor) experts in the field decide that their work should be published in the journal. After 1-2 months, the word comes back from the editor--the reviewers liked the paper, but they think there could be some improvements. Here are their suggestions, which could be minor ones (changes in figures, wording of certain sections, include some additional references) or major (you need to conduct a few more experiments or improved data analysis). The corrections could take as little as a few days, or several months. 7) The authors submit the revised paper back to the journal. Now there is a span of several weeks before the page proofs are returned. This is the last chance the authors have to locate any mistakes (typically spelling and formatting problems). Once the page proofs are accepted, then there may be a span of a week or two before the paper appears on the Nature web site, and an additional span of 2-6 weeks before it appears in print. This paper is now on the web site, but not yet available in the printed journal that appears in your local institutional library. So I'm not at all surprised that it might take 5 years for this work to be published. I am surprised that the subject line to this thread reads "Study 'confirms' Geomyces..."--why the quote around the word "confirms"? According to Koch's postulates*, the confirmation is in this Nature paper, with the caveat that the bats need to be hibernating (and thu
Re: [Texascavers] Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS
Hi all One of our grotto members got invited to the press conference when this was announced. Below is his E-Mail and a site where he reported his comments on the press conference. I really like the "magic bat" affect for warmer areas. Gary Moss === Yo, The press conference is over and I have posted my report on my website, http://behindtheblack.com. The big news today is not so much that the fungus causes white nose, but that bats completely recover from the syndrome given the right circumstances. And those circumstances suggest that the syndrome will have great difficulty doing harm in warmer climates. Bob At 09:36 PM 10/26/2011, Justin Leigh Shaw wrote: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111026/full/news.2011.613.html Culprit behind bat scourge confirmed A cold-loving fungus is behind an epidemic decimating bat populations in North America. By: Susan Young Researchers have confirmed that a recently identified fungus is responsible for white-nose syndrome, a deadly disease that is sweeping through bat colonies in eastern North America. The fungus, Geomyces destructans, infects the skin of hibernating bats, causing lesions on the animals' wings and a fluffy white outgrowth on the muzzle. When white-nose syndrome takes hold of a hibernating colony, more than 90% of the bats can die (see Disease epidemic killing only US bats). The disease was first documented in February 2006 in a cave in New York, and has spread to at least 16 other US states and four Canadian provinces. The culpability of G. destructans for this sudden outbreak was thrown into question when the fungus was found on healthy bats in Europe, where it is not associated with the grim mortality levels seen in North America1. Some proposed that the fungus was not the primary cause of the catastrophic die offs, and that another factor such as an undetected virus must be to blame. But a study published today in Nature2 reveals that G. destructans is indeed guilty. "The fungus alone is sufficient to recreate all the pathology diagnostic for the disease," says David Blehert, a microbiologist at the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, and senior author on the report. Bat-to-bat spread Blehert and his colleagues collected healthy little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) from Wisconsin, which is well beyond the known range of white-nose syndrome. They infected the bats by direct administration of G. destructans spores to the skin or by contact with infected bats from New York. By the end of the 102-day experiment, the tell-tale white fungus was growing on the muzzles and wings of all of the directly infected Wisconsin bats and 16 of the 18 exposed to sick bats. This is the first experimental evidence that white-nose syndrome can be passed from bat to bat, and is very worrying from a conservation point of view because bats huddle together in large numbers in caves and mate in large swarms, says Emma Teeling, a bat biologist at University College Dublin in Ireland. "If a bat has this fungus on them, it's going to spread quickly throughout the population," says Teeling, who was not involved with the study. "It's like a perfect storm." The infected Wisconsin bats did not die during the experiment, which may be due to the limited timeline of infection, the authors suggest. Although the study does not directly show that a healthy bat will die from infection with G. destructans, the results did show that the fungus alone was sufficient to cause lesions diagnostic of white-nose syndrome to form on previously healthy bats, indicating that the fungus is the cause of the deaths so often associated with white-nose syndrome in the wild. To stop a scourge Since it first appeared, white-nose syndrome has behaved like a novel pathogen spreading from a single origin through a naive population, says Jonathan Sleeman, director of the National Wildlife Health Center, who was not involved in the study. Proof that G. destructans is the primary cause of white-nose syndrome will "help us focus our actions or management efforts into the future", he says. Although little can be done to control the spread of the disease through bat-to-bat transmission, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has asked people to stay out of caves in and near affected areas, and has closed some caves on agency-managed land. On 21 October, the FWS announced that up to $1 million in funding will be made available for research on white-nose syndrome. Projects covering topics such as how the fungus proliferates within caves and mines, and the potential for biological means or environmental manipulations to improve bat survival, are among the service's top priorities. * References 1. Puechmaille, S. J. et al. Trends Ecol. Evol. 26, 570-576 (2011). 2. Lorch, J. M. et al. Nature doi:10.1038/nature10590 (2011). - Visit our website: http://texascavers
Re: [Texascavers] Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS
Hi all One of our grotto members got invited to the press conference when this was announced. Below is his E-Mail and a site where he reported his comments on the press conference. I really like the "magic bat" affect for warmer areas. Gary Moss === Yo, The press conference is over and I have posted my report on my website, http://behindtheblack.com. The big news today is not so much that the fungus causes white nose, but that bats completely recover from the syndrome given the right circumstances. And those circumstances suggest that the syndrome will have great difficulty doing harm in warmer climates. Bob At 09:36 PM 10/26/2011, Justin Leigh Shaw wrote: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111026/full/news.2011.613.html Culprit behind bat scourge confirmed A cold-loving fungus is behind an epidemic decimating bat populations in North America. By: Susan Young Researchers have confirmed that a recently identified fungus is responsible for white-nose syndrome, a deadly disease that is sweeping through bat colonies in eastern North America. The fungus, Geomyces destructans, infects the skin of hibernating bats, causing lesions on the animals' wings and a fluffy white outgrowth on the muzzle. When white-nose syndrome takes hold of a hibernating colony, more than 90% of the bats can die (see Disease epidemic killing only US bats). The disease was first documented in February 2006 in a cave in New York, and has spread to at least 16 other US states and four Canadian provinces. The culpability of G. destructans for this sudden outbreak was thrown into question when the fungus was found on healthy bats in Europe, where it is not associated with the grim mortality levels seen in North America1. Some proposed that the fungus was not the primary cause of the catastrophic die offs, and that another factor such as an undetected virus must be to blame. But a study published today in Nature2 reveals that G. destructans is indeed guilty. "The fungus alone is sufficient to recreate all the pathology diagnostic for the disease," says David Blehert, a microbiologist at the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, and senior author on the report. Bat-to-bat spread Blehert and his colleagues collected healthy little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) from Wisconsin, which is well beyond the known range of white-nose syndrome. They infected the bats by direct administration of G. destructans spores to the skin or by contact with infected bats from New York. By the end of the 102-day experiment, the tell-tale white fungus was growing on the muzzles and wings of all of the directly infected Wisconsin bats and 16 of the 18 exposed to sick bats. This is the first experimental evidence that white-nose syndrome can be passed from bat to bat, and is very worrying from a conservation point of view because bats huddle together in large numbers in caves and mate in large swarms, says Emma Teeling, a bat biologist at University College Dublin in Ireland. "If a bat has this fungus on them, it's going to spread quickly throughout the population," says Teeling, who was not involved with the study. "It's like a perfect storm." The infected Wisconsin bats did not die during the experiment, which may be due to the limited timeline of infection, the authors suggest. Although the study does not directly show that a healthy bat will die from infection with G. destructans, the results did show that the fungus alone was sufficient to cause lesions diagnostic of white-nose syndrome to form on previously healthy bats, indicating that the fungus is the cause of the deaths so often associated with white-nose syndrome in the wild. To stop a scourge Since it first appeared, white-nose syndrome has behaved like a novel pathogen spreading from a single origin through a naive population, says Jonathan Sleeman, director of the National Wildlife Health Center, who was not involved in the study. Proof that G. destructans is the primary cause of white-nose syndrome will "help us focus our actions or management efforts into the future", he says. Although little can be done to control the spread of the disease through bat-to-bat transmission, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has asked people to stay out of caves in and near affected areas, and has closed some caves on agency-managed land. On 21 October, the FWS announced that up to $1 million in funding will be made available for research on white-nose syndrome. Projects covering topics such as how the fungus proliferates within caves and mines, and the potential for biological means or environmental manipulations to improve bat survival, are among the service's top priorities. * References 1. Puechmaille, S. J. et al. Trends Ecol. Evol. 26, 570-576 (2011). 2. Lorch, J. M. et al. Nature doi:10.1038/nature10590 (2011). - Visit our website: http://texascavers
Re: [Texascavers] Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS
Hi all One of our grotto members got invited to the press conference when this was announced. Below is his E-Mail and a site where he reported his comments on the press conference. I really like the "magic bat" affect for warmer areas. Gary Moss === Yo, The press conference is over and I have posted my report on my website, http://behindtheblack.com. The big news today is not so much that the fungus causes white nose, but that bats completely recover from the syndrome given the right circumstances. And those circumstances suggest that the syndrome will have great difficulty doing harm in warmer climates. Bob At 09:36 PM 10/26/2011, Justin Leigh Shaw wrote: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111026/full/news.2011.613.html Culprit behind bat scourge confirmed A cold-loving fungus is behind an epidemic decimating bat populations in North America. By: Susan Young Researchers have confirmed that a recently identified fungus is responsible for white-nose syndrome, a deadly disease that is sweeping through bat colonies in eastern North America. The fungus, Geomyces destructans, infects the skin of hibernating bats, causing lesions on the animals' wings and a fluffy white outgrowth on the muzzle. When white-nose syndrome takes hold of a hibernating colony, more than 90% of the bats can die (see Disease epidemic killing only US bats). The disease was first documented in February 2006 in a cave in New York, and has spread to at least 16 other US states and four Canadian provinces. The culpability of G. destructans for this sudden outbreak was thrown into question when the fungus was found on healthy bats in Europe, where it is not associated with the grim mortality levels seen in North America1. Some proposed that the fungus was not the primary cause of the catastrophic die offs, and that another factor such as an undetected virus must be to blame. But a study published today in Nature2 reveals that G. destructans is indeed guilty. "The fungus alone is sufficient to recreate all the pathology diagnostic for the disease," says David Blehert, a microbiologist at the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, and senior author on the report. Bat-to-bat spread Blehert and his colleagues collected healthy little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) from Wisconsin, which is well beyond the known range of white-nose syndrome. They infected the bats by direct administration of G. destructans spores to the skin or by contact with infected bats from New York. By the end of the 102-day experiment, the tell-tale white fungus was growing on the muzzles and wings of all of the directly infected Wisconsin bats and 16 of the 18 exposed to sick bats. This is the first experimental evidence that white-nose syndrome can be passed from bat to bat, and is very worrying from a conservation point of view because bats huddle together in large numbers in caves and mate in large swarms, says Emma Teeling, a bat biologist at University College Dublin in Ireland. "If a bat has this fungus on them, it's going to spread quickly throughout the population," says Teeling, who was not involved with the study. "It's like a perfect storm." The infected Wisconsin bats did not die during the experiment, which may be due to the limited timeline of infection, the authors suggest. Although the study does not directly show that a healthy bat will die from infection with G. destructans, the results did show that the fungus alone was sufficient to cause lesions diagnostic of white-nose syndrome to form on previously healthy bats, indicating that the fungus is the cause of the deaths so often associated with white-nose syndrome in the wild. To stop a scourge Since it first appeared, white-nose syndrome has behaved like a novel pathogen spreading from a single origin through a naive population, says Jonathan Sleeman, director of the National Wildlife Health Center, who was not involved in the study. Proof that G. destructans is the primary cause of white-nose syndrome will "help us focus our actions or management efforts into the future", he says. Although little can be done to control the spread of the disease through bat-to-bat transmission, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has asked people to stay out of caves in and near affected areas, and has closed some caves on agency-managed land. On 21 October, the FWS announced that up to $1 million in funding will be made available for research on white-nose syndrome. Projects covering topics such as how the fungus proliferates within caves and mines, and the potential for biological means or environmental manipulations to improve bat survival, are among the service's top priorities. * References 1. Puechmaille, S. J. et al. Trends Ecol. Evol. 26, 570-576 (2011). 2. Lorch, J. M. et al. Nature doi:10.1038/nature10590 (2011). - Visit our website: http://texascavers
Re: [Texascavers] Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS
>From what I read below, I don't see that the study confirmed G. destructans as entirely responsible for WNS. First two caveats: I am not a bat biologist and I did not read the article in Nature2. That being said, WNS has at least two symptoms, the white fungal growth on and the death of bats. Syndromes typically are thought to have multiple causes. It was my understanding that the white fungal growth had already been identified as G. destructans. This study does confirm bat to bat transmission of the fungus. There have been a number of bats found by mist netting with lesions from the fungus that did not die. However, it is my understanding that in North America, there is a difference between the dead bats and the bats that survive infection from the fungus and that is that the dead bats have no chitinase producing bacteria in their guts and that bats that survive the fungus do. If that is the case, then there may well be multiple causes of WNS, the fungus as an irritant that wakes the bats from torpor, and whatever is killing off the chitinase producing bacteria. If there were not the low body weight from insufficient protein digestion, is that enough to cause death? According to this study, in 102 days it resulted in no mortality. That seems like a long time without any mortality. I think it is unfortunate that the study was not run as long as the northeastern hibernation season. It seems to me that saying that the culprit has been found without being able to attribute all of the symptoms is overconfident, premature, and smacks of assuming one's conclusions. This study only accounted for one of the symptoms of WNS and not the one I think most of us think is the most important. Philip Moss http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111026/full/news.2011.613.html Culprit behind bat scourge confirmed A cold-loving fungus is behind an epidemic decimating bat populations in North America. By: Susan Young Researchers have confirmed that a recently identified fungus is responsible for white-nose syndrome, a deadly disease that is sweeping through bat colonies in eastern North America. The fungus, Geomyces destructans, infects the skin of hibernating bats, causing lesions on the animals' wings and a fluffy white outgrowth on the muzzle. When white-nose syndrome takes hold of a hibernating colony, more than 90% of the bats can die (see Disease epidemic killing only US bats). The disease was first documented in February 2006 in a cave in New York, and has spread to at least 16 other US states and four Canadian provinces. The culpability of G. destructans for this sudden outbreak was thrown into question when the fungus was found on healthy bats in Europe, where it is not associated with the grim mortality levels seen in North America1. Some proposed that the fungus was not the primary cause of the catastrophic die offs, and that another factor � such as an undetected virus � must be to blame. But a study published today in Nature2 reveals that G. destructans is indeed guilty. "The fungus alone is sufficient to recreate all the pathology diagnostic for the disease," says David Blehert, a microbiologist at the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, and senior author on the report. Bat-to-bat spread Blehert and his colleagues collected healthy little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) from Wisconsin, which is well beyond the known range of white-nose syndrome. They infected the bats by direct administration of G. destructans spores to the skin or by contact with infected bats from New York. By the end of the 102-day experiment, the tell-tale white fungus was growing on the muzzles and wings of all of the directly infected Wisconsin bats and 16 of the 18 exposed to sick bats. This is the first experimental evidence that white-nose syndrome can be passed from bat to bat, and is very worrying from a conservation point of view because bats huddle together in large numbers in caves and mate in large swarms, says Emma Teeling, a bat biologist at University College Dublin in Ireland. "If a bat has this fungus on them, it's going to spread quickly throughout the population," says Teeling, who was not involved with the study. "It's like a perfect storm." The infected Wisconsin bats did not die during the experiment, which may be due to the limited timeline of infection, the authors suggest. Although the study does not directly show that a healthy bat will die from infection with G. destructans, the results did show that the fungus alone was sufficient to cause lesions diagnostic of white-nose syndrome to form on previously healthy bats, indicating that the fungus is the cause of the deaths so often associated with white-nose syndrome in the wild. To stop a scourge Since it first appeared, white-nose syndrome has behaved like a novel pathogen spreading from a single origin through a naive population, says Jonathan Sleeman, director of the National Wildlife Health Center, who was not involved in t
Re: [Texascavers] Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS
>From what I read below, I don't see that the study confirmed G. destructans as entirely responsible for WNS. First two caveats: I am not a bat biologist and I did not read the article in Nature2. That being said, WNS has at least two symptoms, the white fungal growth on and the death of bats. Syndromes typically are thought to have multiple causes. It was my understanding that the white fungal growth had already been identified as G. destructans. This study does confirm bat to bat transmission of the fungus. There have been a number of bats found by mist netting with lesions from the fungus that did not die. However, it is my understanding that in North America, there is a difference between the dead bats and the bats that survive infection from the fungus and that is that the dead bats have no chitinase producing bacteria in their guts and that bats that survive the fungus do. If that is the case, then there may well be multiple causes of WNS, the fungus as an irritant that wakes the bats from torpor, and whatever is killing off the chitinase producing bacteria. If there were not the low body weight from insufficient protein digestion, is that enough to cause death? According to this study, in 102 days it resulted in no mortality. That seems like a long time without any mortality. I think it is unfortunate that the study was not run as long as the northeastern hibernation season. It seems to me that saying that the culprit has been found without being able to attribute all of the symptoms is overconfident, premature, and smacks of assuming one's conclusions. This study only accounted for one of the symptoms of WNS and not the one I think most of us think is the most important. Philip Moss http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111026/full/news.2011.613.html Culprit behind bat scourge confirmed A cold-loving fungus is behind an epidemic decimating bat populations in North America. By: Susan Young Researchers have confirmed that a recently identified fungus is responsible for white-nose syndrome, a deadly disease that is sweeping through bat colonies in eastern North America. The fungus, Geomyces destructans, infects the skin of hibernating bats, causing lesions on the animals' wings and a fluffy white outgrowth on the muzzle. When white-nose syndrome takes hold of a hibernating colony, more than 90% of the bats can die (see Disease epidemic killing only US bats). The disease was first documented in February 2006 in a cave in New York, and has spread to at least 16 other US states and four Canadian provinces. The culpability of G. destructans for this sudden outbreak was thrown into question when the fungus was found on healthy bats in Europe, where it is not associated with the grim mortality levels seen in North America1. Some proposed that the fungus was not the primary cause of the catastrophic die offs, and that another factor � such as an undetected virus � must be to blame. But a study published today in Nature2 reveals that G. destructans is indeed guilty. "The fungus alone is sufficient to recreate all the pathology diagnostic for the disease," says David Blehert, a microbiologist at the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, and senior author on the report. Bat-to-bat spread Blehert and his colleagues collected healthy little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) from Wisconsin, which is well beyond the known range of white-nose syndrome. They infected the bats by direct administration of G. destructans spores to the skin or by contact with infected bats from New York. By the end of the 102-day experiment, the tell-tale white fungus was growing on the muzzles and wings of all of the directly infected Wisconsin bats and 16 of the 18 exposed to sick bats. This is the first experimental evidence that white-nose syndrome can be passed from bat to bat, and is very worrying from a conservation point of view because bats huddle together in large numbers in caves and mate in large swarms, says Emma Teeling, a bat biologist at University College Dublin in Ireland. "If a bat has this fungus on them, it's going to spread quickly throughout the population," says Teeling, who was not involved with the study. "It's like a perfect storm." The infected Wisconsin bats did not die during the experiment, which may be due to the limited timeline of infection, the authors suggest. Although the study does not directly show that a healthy bat will die from infection with G. destructans, the results did show that the fungus alone was sufficient to cause lesions diagnostic of white-nose syndrome to form on previously healthy bats, indicating that the fungus is the cause of the deaths so often associated with white-nose syndrome in the wild. To stop a scourge Since it first appeared, white-nose syndrome has behaved like a novel pathogen spreading from a single origin through a naive population, says Jonathan Sleeman, director of the National Wildlife Health Center, who was not involved in t
Re: [Texascavers] Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS
>From what I read below, I don't see that the study confirmed G. destructans as entirely responsible for WNS. First two caveats: I am not a bat biologist and I did not read the article in Nature2. That being said, WNS has at least two symptoms, the white fungal growth on and the death of bats. Syndromes typically are thought to have multiple causes. It was my understanding that the white fungal growth had already been identified as G. destructans. This study does confirm bat to bat transmission of the fungus. There have been a number of bats found by mist netting with lesions from the fungus that did not die. However, it is my understanding that in North America, there is a difference between the dead bats and the bats that survive infection from the fungus and that is that the dead bats have no chitinase producing bacteria in their guts and that bats that survive the fungus do. If that is the case, then there may well be multiple causes of WNS, the fungus as an irritant that wakes the bats from torpor, and whatever is killing off the chitinase producing bacteria. If there were not the low body weight from insufficient protein digestion, is that enough to cause death? According to this study, in 102 days it resulted in no mortality. That seems like a long time without any mortality. I think it is unfortunate that the study was not run as long as the northeastern hibernation season. It seems to me that saying that the culprit has been found without being able to attribute all of the symptoms is overconfident, premature, and smacks of assuming one's conclusions. This study only accounted for one of the symptoms of WNS and not the one I think most of us think is the most important. Philip Moss http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111026/full/news.2011.613.html Culprit behind bat scourge confirmed A cold-loving fungus is behind an epidemic decimating bat populations in North America. By: Susan Young Researchers have confirmed that a recently identified fungus is responsible for white-nose syndrome, a deadly disease that is sweeping through bat colonies in eastern North America. The fungus, Geomyces destructans, infects the skin of hibernating bats, causing lesions on the animals' wings and a fluffy white outgrowth on the muzzle. When white-nose syndrome takes hold of a hibernating colony, more than 90% of the bats can die (see Disease epidemic killing only US bats). The disease was first documented in February 2006 in a cave in New York, and has spread to at least 16 other US states and four Canadian provinces. The culpability of G. destructans for this sudden outbreak was thrown into question when the fungus was found on healthy bats in Europe, where it is not associated with the grim mortality levels seen in North America1. Some proposed that the fungus was not the primary cause of the catastrophic die offs, and that another factor � such as an undetected virus � must be to blame. But a study published today in Nature2 reveals that G. destructans is indeed guilty. "The fungus alone is sufficient to recreate all the pathology diagnostic for the disease," says David Blehert, a microbiologist at the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, and senior author on the report. Bat-to-bat spread Blehert and his colleagues collected healthy little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) from Wisconsin, which is well beyond the known range of white-nose syndrome. They infected the bats by direct administration of G. destructans spores to the skin or by contact with infected bats from New York. By the end of the 102-day experiment, the tell-tale white fungus was growing on the muzzles and wings of all of the directly infected Wisconsin bats and 16 of the 18 exposed to sick bats. This is the first experimental evidence that white-nose syndrome can be passed from bat to bat, and is very worrying from a conservation point of view because bats huddle together in large numbers in caves and mate in large swarms, says Emma Teeling, a bat biologist at University College Dublin in Ireland. "If a bat has this fungus on them, it's going to spread quickly throughout the population," says Teeling, who was not involved with the study. "It's like a perfect storm." The infected Wisconsin bats did not die during the experiment, which may be due to the limited timeline of infection, the authors suggest. Although the study does not directly show that a healthy bat will die from infection with G. destructans, the results did show that the fungus alone was sufficient to cause lesions diagnostic of white-nose syndrome to form on previously healthy bats, indicating that the fungus is the cause of the deaths so often associated with white-nose syndrome in the wild. To stop a scourge Since it first appeared, white-nose syndrome has behaved like a novel pathogen spreading from a single origin through a naive population, says Jonathan Sleeman, director of the National Wildlife Health Center, who was not involved in t
Re: Re: Re: [Texascavers] Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS
And peer-review can take time. TOct 27, 2011 06:12:36 AM, tbsam...@verizon.net wrote: "Cuter" organisms than bats got cuts in line, I'd think. The lumpen-prole like baby belugas and other cuddlier critters more than they do bats. "Save the Beany Babies!" TOct 26, 2011 11:35:07 PM, jerryat...@aol.com wrote: While it is good news to finally know the cause behind WNS, I have to wonder why it took 5 years and several million dollars for someone to finally conduct such a simple and obvious experiment to definitively prove G. destructans as the culprit. Jerry. In a message dated 10/26/2011 8:36:42 P.M. Central Daylight Time, jus...@oztotl.net writes: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111026/full/news.2011.613.htmlCulprit behind bat scourge confirmedA cold-loving fungus is behind an epidemic decimating bat populationsin North America.By: Susan YoungResearchers have confirmed that a recently identified fungus isresponsible for white-nose syndrome, a deadly disease that is sweepingthrough bat colonies in eastern North America.The fungus, Geomyces destructans, infects the skin of hibernatingbats, causing lesions on the animals' wings and a fluffy whiteoutgrowth on the muzzle. When white-nose syndrome takes hold of ahibernating colony, more than 90% of the bats can die (see Diseaseepidemic killing only US bats). The disease was first documented inFebruary 2006 in a cave in New York, and has spread to at least 16other US states and four Canadian provinces.The culpability of G. destructans for this sudden outbreak was throwninto question when the fungus was found on healthy bats in Europe,where it is not associated with the grim mortality levels seen inNorth America1. Some proposed that the fungus was not the primarycause of the catastrophic die offs, and that another factor — such asan undetected virus — must be to blame. But a study published today inNature2 reveals that G. destructans is indeed guilty."The fungus alone is sufficient to recreate all the pathologydiagnostic for the disease," says David Blehert, a microbiologist atthe National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, and seniorauthor on the report.Bat-to-bat spreadBlehert and his colleagues collected healthy little brown bats (Myotislucifugus) from Wisconsin, which is well beyond the known range ofwhite-nose syndrome. They infected the bats by direct administrationof G. destructans spores to the skin or by contact with infected batsfrom New York. By the end of the 102-day experiment, the tell-talewhite fungus was growing on the muzzles and wings of all of thedirectly infected Wisconsin bats and 16 of the 18 exposed to sickbats.This is the first experimental evidence that white-nose syndrome canbe passed from bat to bat, and is very worrying from a conservationpoint of view because bats huddle together in large numbers in cavesand mate in large swarms, says Emma Teeling, a bat biologist atUniversity College Dublin in Ireland. "If a bat has this fungus onthem, it's going to spread quickly throughout the population," saysTeeling, who was not involved with the study. "It's like a perfectstorm."The infected Wisconsin bats did not die during the experiment, whichmay be due to the limited timeline of infection, the authors suggest.Although the study does not directly show that a healthy bat will diefrom infection with G. destructans, the results did show that thefungus alone was sufficient to cause lesions diagnostic of white-nosesyndrome to form on previously healthy bats, indicating that thefungus is the cause of the deaths so often associated with white-nosesyndrome in the wild.To stop a scourgeSince it first appeared, white-nose syndrome has behaved like a novelpathogen spreading from a single origin through a naive population,says Jonathan Sleeman, director of the National Wildlife HealthCenter, who was not involved in the study. Proof that G. destructansis the primary cause of white-nose syndrome will "help us focus ouractions or management efforts into the future", he says.Although little can be done to control the spread of the diseasethrough bat-to-bat transmission, the US Fish and Wildlife Service(FWS) has asked people to stay out of caves in and near affectedareas, and has closed some caves on agency-managed land.On 21 October, the FWS announced that up to $1 million in funding willbe made available for research on white-nose syndrome. Projectscovering topics such as how the fungus proliferates within caves andmines, and the potential for biological means or environmentalmanipulations to improve bat survival, are among the service's toppriorities. * References 1. Puechmaille, S. J. et al. Trends Ecol. Evol. 26, 570-576 (2011). 2. Lorch, J. M. et al. Nature doi:10.1038/nature10590 (2011).-Visit our website: http://texascavers.comTo unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.comFor additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@t
Re: Re: Re: [Texascavers] Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS
And peer-review can take time. TOct 27, 2011 06:12:36 AM, tbsam...@verizon.net wrote: "Cuter" organisms than bats got cuts in line, I'd think. The lumpen-prole like baby belugas and other cuddlier critters more than they do bats. "Save the Beany Babies!" TOct 26, 2011 11:35:07 PM, jerryat...@aol.com wrote: While it is good news to finally know the cause behind WNS, I have to wonder why it took 5 years and several million dollars for someone to finally conduct such a simple and obvious experiment to definitively prove G. destructans as the culprit. Jerry. In a message dated 10/26/2011 8:36:42 P.M. Central Daylight Time, jus...@oztotl.net writes: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111026/full/news.2011.613.htmlCulprit behind bat scourge confirmedA cold-loving fungus is behind an epidemic decimating bat populationsin North America.By: Susan YoungResearchers have confirmed that a recently identified fungus isresponsible for white-nose syndrome, a deadly disease that is sweepingthrough bat colonies in eastern North America.The fungus, Geomyces destructans, infects the skin of hibernatingbats, causing lesions on the animals' wings and a fluffy whiteoutgrowth on the muzzle. When white-nose syndrome takes hold of ahibernating colony, more than 90% of the bats can die (see Diseaseepidemic killing only US bats). The disease was first documented inFebruary 2006 in a cave in New York, and has spread to at least 16other US states and four Canadian provinces.The culpability of G. destructans for this sudden outbreak was throwninto question when the fungus was found on healthy bats in Europe,where it is not associated with the grim mortality levels seen inNorth America1. Some proposed that the fungus was not the primarycause of the catastrophic die offs, and that another factor — such asan undetected virus — must be to blame. But a study published today inNature2 reveals that G. destructans is indeed guilty."The fungus alone is sufficient to recreate all the pathologydiagnostic for the disease," says David Blehert, a microbiologist atthe National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, and seniorauthor on the report.Bat-to-bat spreadBlehert and his colleagues collected healthy little brown bats (Myotislucifugus) from Wisconsin, which is well beyond the known range ofwhite-nose syndrome. They infected the bats by direct administrationof G. destructans spores to the skin or by contact with infected batsfrom New York. By the end of the 102-day experiment, the tell-talewhite fungus was growing on the muzzles and wings of all of thedirectly infected Wisconsin bats and 16 of the 18 exposed to sickbats.This is the first experimental evidence that white-nose syndrome canbe passed from bat to bat, and is very worrying from a conservationpoint of view because bats huddle together in large numbers in cavesand mate in large swarms, says Emma Teeling, a bat biologist atUniversity College Dublin in Ireland. "If a bat has this fungus onthem, it's going to spread quickly throughout the population," saysTeeling, who was not involved with the study. "It's like a perfectstorm."The infected Wisconsin bats did not die during the experiment, whichmay be due to the limited timeline of infection, the authors suggest.Although the study does not directly show that a healthy bat will diefrom infection with G. destructans, the results did show that thefungus alone was sufficient to cause lesions diagnostic of white-nosesyndrome to form on previously healthy bats, indicating that thefungus is the cause of the deaths so often associated with white-nosesyndrome in the wild.To stop a scourgeSince it first appeared, white-nose syndrome has behaved like a novelpathogen spreading from a single origin through a naive population,says Jonathan Sleeman, director of the National Wildlife HealthCenter, who was not involved in the study. Proof that G. destructansis the primary cause of white-nose syndrome will "help us focus ouractions or management efforts into the future", he says.Although little can be done to control the spread of the diseasethrough bat-to-bat transmission, the US Fish and Wildlife Service(FWS) has asked people to stay out of caves in and near affectedareas, and has closed some caves on agency-managed land.On 21 October, the FWS announced that up to $1 million in funding willbe made available for research on white-nose syndrome. Projectscovering topics such as how the fungus proliferates within caves andmines, and the potential for biological means or environmentalmanipulations to improve bat survival, are among the service's toppriorities. * References 1. Puechmaille, S. J. et al. Trends Ecol. Evol. 26, 570-576 (2011). 2. Lorch, J. M. et al. Nature doi:10.1038/nature10590 (2011).-Visit our website: http://texascavers.comTo unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.comFor additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@t
Re: Re: Re: [Texascavers] Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS
And peer-review can take time. TOct 27, 2011 06:12:36 AM, tbsam...@verizon.net wrote: "Cuter" organisms than bats got cuts in line, I'd think. The lumpen-prole like baby belugas and other cuddlier critters more than they do bats. "Save the Beany Babies!" TOct 26, 2011 11:35:07 PM, jerryat...@aol.com wrote: While it is good news to finally know the cause behind WNS, I have to wonder why it took 5 years and several million dollars for someone to finally conduct such a simple and obvious experiment to definitively prove G. destructans as the culprit. Jerry. In a message dated 10/26/2011 8:36:42 P.M. Central Daylight Time, jus...@oztotl.net writes: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111026/full/news.2011.613.htmlCulprit behind bat scourge confirmedA cold-loving fungus is behind an epidemic decimating bat populationsin North America.By: Susan YoungResearchers have confirmed that a recently identified fungus isresponsible for white-nose syndrome, a deadly disease that is sweepingthrough bat colonies in eastern North America.The fungus, Geomyces destructans, infects the skin of hibernatingbats, causing lesions on the animals' wings and a fluffy whiteoutgrowth on the muzzle. When white-nose syndrome takes hold of ahibernating colony, more than 90% of the bats can die (see Diseaseepidemic killing only US bats). The disease was first documented inFebruary 2006 in a cave in New York, and has spread to at least 16other US states and four Canadian provinces.The culpability of G. destructans for this sudden outbreak was throwninto question when the fungus was found on healthy bats in Europe,where it is not associated with the grim mortality levels seen inNorth America1. Some proposed that the fungus was not the primarycause of the catastrophic die offs, and that another factor — such asan undetected virus — must be to blame. But a study published today inNature2 reveals that G. destructans is indeed guilty."The fungus alone is sufficient to recreate all the pathologydiagnostic for the disease," says David Blehert, a microbiologist atthe National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, and seniorauthor on the report.Bat-to-bat spreadBlehert and his colleagues collected healthy little brown bats (Myotislucifugus) from Wisconsin, which is well beyond the known range ofwhite-nose syndrome. They infected the bats by direct administrationof G. destructans spores to the skin or by contact with infected batsfrom New York. By the end of the 102-day experiment, the tell-talewhite fungus was growing on the muzzles and wings of all of thedirectly infected Wisconsin bats and 16 of the 18 exposed to sickbats.This is the first experimental evidence that white-nose syndrome canbe passed from bat to bat, and is very worrying from a conservationpoint of view because bats huddle together in large numbers in cavesand mate in large swarms, says Emma Teeling, a bat biologist atUniversity College Dublin in Ireland. "If a bat has this fungus onthem, it's going to spread quickly throughout the population," saysTeeling, who was not involved with the study. "It's like a perfectstorm."The infected Wisconsin bats did not die during the experiment, whichmay be due to the limited timeline of infection, the authors suggest.Although the study does not directly show that a healthy bat will diefrom infection with G. destructans, the results did show that thefungus alone was sufficient to cause lesions diagnostic of white-nosesyndrome to form on previously healthy bats, indicating that thefungus is the cause of the deaths so often associated with white-nosesyndrome in the wild.To stop a scourgeSince it first appeared, white-nose syndrome has behaved like a novelpathogen spreading from a single origin through a naive population,says Jonathan Sleeman, director of the National Wildlife HealthCenter, who was not involved in the study. Proof that G. destructansis the primary cause of white-nose syndrome will "help us focus ouractions or management efforts into the future", he says.Although little can be done to control the spread of the diseasethrough bat-to-bat transmission, the US Fish and Wildlife Service(FWS) has asked people to stay out of caves in and near affectedareas, and has closed some caves on agency-managed land.On 21 October, the FWS announced that up to $1 million in funding willbe made available for research on white-nose syndrome. Projectscovering topics such as how the fungus proliferates within caves andmines, and the potential for biological means or environmentalmanipulations to improve bat survival, are among the service's toppriorities. * References 1. Puechmaille, S. J. et al. Trends Ecol. Evol. 26, 570-576 (2011). 2. Lorch, J. M. et al. Nature doi:10.1038/nature10590 (2011).-Visit our website: http://texascavers.comTo unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.comFor additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@t
Re: Re: [Texascavers] Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS
"Cuter" organisms than bats got cuts in line, I'd think. The lumpen-prole like baby belugas and other cuddlier critters more than they do bats. "Save the Beany Babies!" TOct 26, 2011 11:35:07 PM, jerryat...@aol.com wrote: While it is good news to finally know the cause behind WNS, I have to wonder why it took 5 years and several million dollars for someone to finally conduct such a simple and obvious experiment to definitively prove G. destructans as the culprit. Jerry. In a message dated 10/26/2011 8:36:42 P.M. Central Daylight Time, jus...@oztotl.net writes: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111026/full/news.2011.613.htmlCulprit behind bat scourge confirmedA cold-loving fungus is behind an epidemic decimating bat populationsin North America.By: Susan YoungResearchers have confirmed that a recently identified fungus isresponsible for white-nose syndrome, a deadly disease that is sweepingthrough bat colonies in eastern North America.The fungus, Geomyces destructans, infects the skin of hibernatingbats, causing lesions on the animals' wings and a fluffy whiteoutgrowth on the muzzle. When white-nose syndrome takes hold of ahibernating colony, more than 90% of the bats can die (see Diseaseepidemic killing only US bats). The disease was first documented inFebruary 2006 in a cave in New York, and has spread to at least 16other US states and four Canadian provinces.The culpability of G. destructans for this sudden outbreak was throwninto question when the fungus was found on healthy bats in Europe,where it is not associated with the grim mortality levels seen inNorth America1. Some proposed that the fungus was not the primarycause of the catastrophic die offs, and that another factor — such asan undetected virus — must be to blame. But a study published today inNature2 reveals that G. destructans is indeed guilty."The fungus alone is sufficient to recreate all the pathologydiagnostic for the disease," says David Blehert, a microbiologist atthe National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, and seniorauthor on the report.Bat-to-bat spreadBlehert and his colleagues collected healthy little brown bats (Myotislucifugus) from Wisconsin, which is well beyond the known range ofwhite-nose syndrome. They infected the bats by direct administrationof G. destructans spores to the skin or by contact with infected batsfrom New York. By the end of the 102-day experiment, the tell-talewhite fungus was growing on the muzzles and wings of all of thedirectly infected Wisconsin bats and 16 of the 18 exposed to sickbats.This is the first experimental evidence that white-nose syndrome canbe passed from bat to bat, and is very worrying from a conservationpoint of view because bats huddle together in large numbers in cavesand mate in large swarms, says Emma Teeling, a bat biologist atUniversity College Dublin in Ireland. "If a bat has this fungus onthem, it's going to spread quickly throughout the population," saysTeeling, who was not involved with the study. "It's like a perfectstorm."The infected Wisconsin bats did not die during the experiment, whichmay be due to the limited timeline of infection, the authors suggest.Although the study does not directly show that a healthy bat will diefrom infection with G. destructans, the results did show that thefungus alone was sufficient to cause lesions diagnostic of white-nosesyndrome to form on previously healthy bats, indicating that thefungus is the cause of the deaths so often associated with white-nosesyndrome in the wild.To stop a scourgeSince it first appeared, white-nose syndrome has behaved like a novelpathogen spreading from a single origin through a naive population,says Jonathan Sleeman, director of the National Wildlife HealthCenter, who was not involved in the study. Proof that G. destructansis the primary cause of white-nose syndrome will "help us focus ouractions or management efforts into the future", he says.Although little can be done to control the spread of the diseasethrough bat-to-bat transmission, the US Fish and Wildlife Service(FWS) has asked people to stay out of caves in and near affectedareas, and has closed some caves on agency-managed land.On 21 October, the FWS announced that up to $1 million in funding willbe made available for research on white-nose syndrome. Projectscovering topics such as how the fungus proliferates within caves andmines, and the potential for biological means or environmentalmanipulations to improve bat survival, are among the service's toppriorities. * References 1. Puechmaille, S. J. et al. Trends Ecol. Evol. 26, 570-576 (2011). 2. Lorch, J. M. et al. Nature doi:10.1038/nature10590 (2011).-Visit our website: http://texascavers.comTo unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.comFor additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com -
Re: Re: [Texascavers] Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS
"Cuter" organisms than bats got cuts in line, I'd think. The lumpen-prole like baby belugas and other cuddlier critters more than they do bats. "Save the Beany Babies!" TOct 26, 2011 11:35:07 PM, jerryat...@aol.com wrote: While it is good news to finally know the cause behind WNS, I have to wonder why it took 5 years and several million dollars for someone to finally conduct such a simple and obvious experiment to definitively prove G. destructans as the culprit. Jerry. In a message dated 10/26/2011 8:36:42 P.M. Central Daylight Time, jus...@oztotl.net writes: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111026/full/news.2011.613.htmlCulprit behind bat scourge confirmedA cold-loving fungus is behind an epidemic decimating bat populationsin North America.By: Susan YoungResearchers have confirmed that a recently identified fungus isresponsible for white-nose syndrome, a deadly disease that is sweepingthrough bat colonies in eastern North America.The fungus, Geomyces destructans, infects the skin of hibernatingbats, causing lesions on the animals' wings and a fluffy whiteoutgrowth on the muzzle. When white-nose syndrome takes hold of ahibernating colony, more than 90% of the bats can die (see Diseaseepidemic killing only US bats). The disease was first documented inFebruary 2006 in a cave in New York, and has spread to at least 16other US states and four Canadian provinces.The culpability of G. destructans for this sudden outbreak was throwninto question when the fungus was found on healthy bats in Europe,where it is not associated with the grim mortality levels seen inNorth America1. Some proposed that the fungus was not the primarycause of the catastrophic die offs, and that another factor — such asan undetected virus — must be to blame. But a study published today inNature2 reveals that G. destructans is indeed guilty."The fungus alone is sufficient to recreate all the pathologydiagnostic for the disease," says David Blehert, a microbiologist atthe National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, and seniorauthor on the report.Bat-to-bat spreadBlehert and his colleagues collected healthy little brown bats (Myotislucifugus) from Wisconsin, which is well beyond the known range ofwhite-nose syndrome. They infected the bats by direct administrationof G. destructans spores to the skin or by contact with infected batsfrom New York. By the end of the 102-day experiment, the tell-talewhite fungus was growing on the muzzles and wings of all of thedirectly infected Wisconsin bats and 16 of the 18 exposed to sickbats.This is the first experimental evidence that white-nose syndrome canbe passed from bat to bat, and is very worrying from a conservationpoint of view because bats huddle together in large numbers in cavesand mate in large swarms, says Emma Teeling, a bat biologist atUniversity College Dublin in Ireland. "If a bat has this fungus onthem, it's going to spread quickly throughout the population," saysTeeling, who was not involved with the study. "It's like a perfectstorm."The infected Wisconsin bats did not die during the experiment, whichmay be due to the limited timeline of infection, the authors suggest.Although the study does not directly show that a healthy bat will diefrom infection with G. destructans, the results did show that thefungus alone was sufficient to cause lesions diagnostic of white-nosesyndrome to form on previously healthy bats, indicating that thefungus is the cause of the deaths so often associated with white-nosesyndrome in the wild.To stop a scourgeSince it first appeared, white-nose syndrome has behaved like a novelpathogen spreading from a single origin through a naive population,says Jonathan Sleeman, director of the National Wildlife HealthCenter, who was not involved in the study. Proof that G. destructansis the primary cause of white-nose syndrome will "help us focus ouractions or management efforts into the future", he says.Although little can be done to control the spread of the diseasethrough bat-to-bat transmission, the US Fish and Wildlife Service(FWS) has asked people to stay out of caves in and near affectedareas, and has closed some caves on agency-managed land.On 21 October, the FWS announced that up to $1 million in funding willbe made available for research on white-nose syndrome. Projectscovering topics such as how the fungus proliferates within caves andmines, and the potential for biological means or environmentalmanipulations to improve bat survival, are among the service's toppriorities. * References 1. Puechmaille, S. J. et al. Trends Ecol. Evol. 26, 570-576 (2011). 2. Lorch, J. M. et al. Nature doi:10.1038/nature10590 (2011).-Visit our website: http://texascavers.comTo unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.comFor additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com -
Re: Re: [Texascavers] Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS
"Cuter" organisms than bats got cuts in line, I'd think. The lumpen-prole like baby belugas and other cuddlier critters more than they do bats. "Save the Beany Babies!" TOct 26, 2011 11:35:07 PM, jerryat...@aol.com wrote: While it is good news to finally know the cause behind WNS, I have to wonder why it took 5 years and several million dollars for someone to finally conduct such a simple and obvious experiment to definitively prove G. destructans as the culprit. Jerry. In a message dated 10/26/2011 8:36:42 P.M. Central Daylight Time, jus...@oztotl.net writes: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111026/full/news.2011.613.htmlCulprit behind bat scourge confirmedA cold-loving fungus is behind an epidemic decimating bat populationsin North America.By: Susan YoungResearchers have confirmed that a recently identified fungus isresponsible for white-nose syndrome, a deadly disease that is sweepingthrough bat colonies in eastern North America.The fungus, Geomyces destructans, infects the skin of hibernatingbats, causing lesions on the animals' wings and a fluffy whiteoutgrowth on the muzzle. When white-nose syndrome takes hold of ahibernating colony, more than 90% of the bats can die (see Diseaseepidemic killing only US bats). The disease was first documented inFebruary 2006 in a cave in New York, and has spread to at least 16other US states and four Canadian provinces.The culpability of G. destructans for this sudden outbreak was throwninto question when the fungus was found on healthy bats in Europe,where it is not associated with the grim mortality levels seen inNorth America1. Some proposed that the fungus was not the primarycause of the catastrophic die offs, and that another factor — such asan undetected virus — must be to blame. But a study published today inNature2 reveals that G. destructans is indeed guilty."The fungus alone is sufficient to recreate all the pathologydiagnostic for the disease," says David Blehert, a microbiologist atthe National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, and seniorauthor on the report.Bat-to-bat spreadBlehert and his colleagues collected healthy little brown bats (Myotislucifugus) from Wisconsin, which is well beyond the known range ofwhite-nose syndrome. They infected the bats by direct administrationof G. destructans spores to the skin or by contact with infected batsfrom New York. By the end of the 102-day experiment, the tell-talewhite fungus was growing on the muzzles and wings of all of thedirectly infected Wisconsin bats and 16 of the 18 exposed to sickbats.This is the first experimental evidence that white-nose syndrome canbe passed from bat to bat, and is very worrying from a conservationpoint of view because bats huddle together in large numbers in cavesand mate in large swarms, says Emma Teeling, a bat biologist atUniversity College Dublin in Ireland. "If a bat has this fungus onthem, it's going to spread quickly throughout the population," saysTeeling, who was not involved with the study. "It's like a perfectstorm."The infected Wisconsin bats did not die during the experiment, whichmay be due to the limited timeline of infection, the authors suggest.Although the study does not directly show that a healthy bat will diefrom infection with G. destructans, the results did show that thefungus alone was sufficient to cause lesions diagnostic of white-nosesyndrome to form on previously healthy bats, indicating that thefungus is the cause of the deaths so often associated with white-nosesyndrome in the wild.To stop a scourgeSince it first appeared, white-nose syndrome has behaved like a novelpathogen spreading from a single origin through a naive population,says Jonathan Sleeman, director of the National Wildlife HealthCenter, who was not involved in the study. Proof that G. destructansis the primary cause of white-nose syndrome will "help us focus ouractions or management efforts into the future", he says.Although little can be done to control the spread of the diseasethrough bat-to-bat transmission, the US Fish and Wildlife Service(FWS) has asked people to stay out of caves in and near affectedareas, and has closed some caves on agency-managed land.On 21 October, the FWS announced that up to $1 million in funding willbe made available for research on white-nose syndrome. Projectscovering topics such as how the fungus proliferates within caves andmines, and the potential for biological means or environmentalmanipulations to improve bat survival, are among the service's toppriorities. * References 1. Puechmaille, S. J. et al. Trends Ecol. Evol. 26, 570-576 (2011). 2. Lorch, J. M. et al. Nature doi:10.1038/nature10590 (2011).-Visit our website: http://texascavers.comTo unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.comFor additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com -
Re: [Texascavers] Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS
While it is good news to finally know the cause behind WNS, I have to wonder why it took 5 years and several million dollars for someone to finally conduct such a simple and obvious experiment to definitively prove G. destructans as the culprit. Jerry. In a message dated 10/26/2011 8:36:42 P.M. Central Daylight Time, jus...@oztotl.net writes: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111026/full/news.2011.613.html Culprit behind bat scourge confirmed A cold-loving fungus is behind an epidemic decimating bat populations in North America. By: Susan Young Researchers have confirmed that a recently identified fungus is responsible for white-nose syndrome, a deadly disease that is sweeping through bat colonies in eastern North America. The fungus, Geomyces destructans, infects the skin of hibernating bats, causing lesions on the animals' wings and a fluffy white outgrowth on the muzzle. When white-nose syndrome takes hold of a hibernating colony, more than 90% of the bats can die (see Disease epidemic killing only US bats). The disease was first documented in February 2006 in a cave in New York, and has spread to at least 16 other US states and four Canadian provinces. The culpability of G. destructans for this sudden outbreak was thrown into question when the fungus was found on healthy bats in Europe, where it is not associated with the grim mortality levels seen in North America1. Some proposed that the fungus was not the primary cause of the catastrophic die offs, and that another factor — such as an undetected virus — must be to blame. But a study published today in Nature2 reveals that G. destructans is indeed guilty. "The fungus alone is sufficient to recreate all the pathology diagnostic for the disease," says David Blehert, a microbiologist at the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, and senior author on the report. Bat-to-bat spread Blehert and his colleagues collected healthy little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) from Wisconsin, which is well beyond the known range of white-nose syndrome. They infected the bats by direct administration of G. destructans spores to the skin or by contact with infected bats from New York. By the end of the 102-day experiment, the tell-tale white fungus was growing on the muzzles and wings of all of the directly infected Wisconsin bats and 16 of the 18 exposed to sick bats. This is the first experimental evidence that white-nose syndrome can be passed from bat to bat, and is very worrying from a conservation point of view because bats huddle together in large numbers in caves and mate in large swarms, says Emma Teeling, a bat biologist at University College Dublin in Ireland. "If a bat has this fungus on them, it's going to spread quickly throughout the population," says Teeling, who was not involved with the study. "It's like a perfect storm." The infected Wisconsin bats did not die during the experiment, which may be due to the limited timeline of infection, the authors suggest. Although the study does not directly show that a healthy bat will die from infection with G. destructans, the results did show that the fungus alone was sufficient to cause lesions diagnostic of white-nose syndrome to form on previously healthy bats, indicating that the fungus is the cause of the deaths so often associated with white-nose syndrome in the wild. To stop a scourge Since it first appeared, white-nose syndrome has behaved like a novel pathogen spreading from a single origin through a naive population, says Jonathan Sleeman, director of the National Wildlife Health Center, who was not involved in the study. Proof that G. destructans is the primary cause of white-nose syndrome will "help us focus our actions or management efforts into the future", he says. Although little can be done to control the spread of the disease through bat-to-bat transmission, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has asked people to stay out of caves in and near affected areas, and has closed some caves on agency-managed land. On 21 October, the FWS announced that up to $1 million in funding will be made available for research on white-nose syndrome. Projects covering topics such as how the fungus proliferates within caves and mines, and the potential for biological means or environmental manipulations to improve bat survival, are among the service's top priorities. * References 1. Puechmaille, S. J. et al. Trends Ecol. Evol. 26, 570-576 (2011). 2. Lorch, J. M. et al. Nature doi:10.1038/nature10590 (2011). - Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com
Re: [Texascavers] Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS
While it is good news to finally know the cause behind WNS, I have to wonder why it took 5 years and several million dollars for someone to finally conduct such a simple and obvious experiment to definitively prove G. destructans as the culprit. Jerry. In a message dated 10/26/2011 8:36:42 P.M. Central Daylight Time, jus...@oztotl.net writes: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111026/full/news.2011.613.html Culprit behind bat scourge confirmed A cold-loving fungus is behind an epidemic decimating bat populations in North America. By: Susan Young Researchers have confirmed that a recently identified fungus is responsible for white-nose syndrome, a deadly disease that is sweeping through bat colonies in eastern North America. The fungus, Geomyces destructans, infects the skin of hibernating bats, causing lesions on the animals' wings and a fluffy white outgrowth on the muzzle. When white-nose syndrome takes hold of a hibernating colony, more than 90% of the bats can die (see Disease epidemic killing only US bats). The disease was first documented in February 2006 in a cave in New York, and has spread to at least 16 other US states and four Canadian provinces. The culpability of G. destructans for this sudden outbreak was thrown into question when the fungus was found on healthy bats in Europe, where it is not associated with the grim mortality levels seen in North America1. Some proposed that the fungus was not the primary cause of the catastrophic die offs, and that another factor — such as an undetected virus — must be to blame. But a study published today in Nature2 reveals that G. destructans is indeed guilty. "The fungus alone is sufficient to recreate all the pathology diagnostic for the disease," says David Blehert, a microbiologist at the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, and senior author on the report. Bat-to-bat spread Blehert and his colleagues collected healthy little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) from Wisconsin, which is well beyond the known range of white-nose syndrome. They infected the bats by direct administration of G. destructans spores to the skin or by contact with infected bats from New York. By the end of the 102-day experiment, the tell-tale white fungus was growing on the muzzles and wings of all of the directly infected Wisconsin bats and 16 of the 18 exposed to sick bats. This is the first experimental evidence that white-nose syndrome can be passed from bat to bat, and is very worrying from a conservation point of view because bats huddle together in large numbers in caves and mate in large swarms, says Emma Teeling, a bat biologist at University College Dublin in Ireland. "If a bat has this fungus on them, it's going to spread quickly throughout the population," says Teeling, who was not involved with the study. "It's like a perfect storm." The infected Wisconsin bats did not die during the experiment, which may be due to the limited timeline of infection, the authors suggest. Although the study does not directly show that a healthy bat will die from infection with G. destructans, the results did show that the fungus alone was sufficient to cause lesions diagnostic of white-nose syndrome to form on previously healthy bats, indicating that the fungus is the cause of the deaths so often associated with white-nose syndrome in the wild. To stop a scourge Since it first appeared, white-nose syndrome has behaved like a novel pathogen spreading from a single origin through a naive population, says Jonathan Sleeman, director of the National Wildlife Health Center, who was not involved in the study. Proof that G. destructans is the primary cause of white-nose syndrome will "help us focus our actions or management efforts into the future", he says. Although little can be done to control the spread of the disease through bat-to-bat transmission, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has asked people to stay out of caves in and near affected areas, and has closed some caves on agency-managed land. On 21 October, the FWS announced that up to $1 million in funding will be made available for research on white-nose syndrome. Projects covering topics such as how the fungus proliferates within caves and mines, and the potential for biological means or environmental manipulations to improve bat survival, are among the service's top priorities. * References 1. Puechmaille, S. J. et al. Trends Ecol. Evol. 26, 570-576 (2011). 2. Lorch, J. M. et al. Nature doi:10.1038/nature10590 (2011). - Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com
Re: [Texascavers] Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS
While it is good news to finally know the cause behind WNS, I have to wonder why it took 5 years and several million dollars for someone to finally conduct such a simple and obvious experiment to definitively prove G. destructans as the culprit. Jerry. In a message dated 10/26/2011 8:36:42 P.M. Central Daylight Time, jus...@oztotl.net writes: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111026/full/news.2011.613.html Culprit behind bat scourge confirmed A cold-loving fungus is behind an epidemic decimating bat populations in North America. By: Susan Young Researchers have confirmed that a recently identified fungus is responsible for white-nose syndrome, a deadly disease that is sweeping through bat colonies in eastern North America. The fungus, Geomyces destructans, infects the skin of hibernating bats, causing lesions on the animals' wings and a fluffy white outgrowth on the muzzle. When white-nose syndrome takes hold of a hibernating colony, more than 90% of the bats can die (see Disease epidemic killing only US bats). The disease was first documented in February 2006 in a cave in New York, and has spread to at least 16 other US states and four Canadian provinces. The culpability of G. destructans for this sudden outbreak was thrown into question when the fungus was found on healthy bats in Europe, where it is not associated with the grim mortality levels seen in North America1. Some proposed that the fungus was not the primary cause of the catastrophic die offs, and that another factor — such as an undetected virus — must be to blame. But a study published today in Nature2 reveals that G. destructans is indeed guilty. "The fungus alone is sufficient to recreate all the pathology diagnostic for the disease," says David Blehert, a microbiologist at the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, and senior author on the report. Bat-to-bat spread Blehert and his colleagues collected healthy little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) from Wisconsin, which is well beyond the known range of white-nose syndrome. They infected the bats by direct administration of G. destructans spores to the skin or by contact with infected bats from New York. By the end of the 102-day experiment, the tell-tale white fungus was growing on the muzzles and wings of all of the directly infected Wisconsin bats and 16 of the 18 exposed to sick bats. This is the first experimental evidence that white-nose syndrome can be passed from bat to bat, and is very worrying from a conservation point of view because bats huddle together in large numbers in caves and mate in large swarms, says Emma Teeling, a bat biologist at University College Dublin in Ireland. "If a bat has this fungus on them, it's going to spread quickly throughout the population," says Teeling, who was not involved with the study. "It's like a perfect storm." The infected Wisconsin bats did not die during the experiment, which may be due to the limited timeline of infection, the authors suggest. Although the study does not directly show that a healthy bat will die from infection with G. destructans, the results did show that the fungus alone was sufficient to cause lesions diagnostic of white-nose syndrome to form on previously healthy bats, indicating that the fungus is the cause of the deaths so often associated with white-nose syndrome in the wild. To stop a scourge Since it first appeared, white-nose syndrome has behaved like a novel pathogen spreading from a single origin through a naive population, says Jonathan Sleeman, director of the National Wildlife Health Center, who was not involved in the study. Proof that G. destructans is the primary cause of white-nose syndrome will "help us focus our actions or management efforts into the future", he says. Although little can be done to control the spread of the disease through bat-to-bat transmission, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has asked people to stay out of caves in and near affected areas, and has closed some caves on agency-managed land. On 21 October, the FWS announced that up to $1 million in funding will be made available for research on white-nose syndrome. Projects covering topics such as how the fungus proliferates within caves and mines, and the potential for biological means or environmental manipulations to improve bat survival, are among the service's top priorities. * References 1. Puechmaille, S. J. et al. Trends Ecol. Evol. 26, 570-576 (2011). 2. Lorch, J. M. et al. Nature doi:10.1038/nature10590 (2011). - Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com
[Texascavers] Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111026/full/news.2011.613.html Culprit behind bat scourge confirmed A cold-loving fungus is behind an epidemic decimating bat populations in North America. By: Susan Young Researchers have confirmed that a recently identified fungus is responsible for white-nose syndrome, a deadly disease that is sweeping through bat colonies in eastern North America. The fungus, Geomyces destructans, infects the skin of hibernating bats, causing lesions on the animals' wings and a fluffy white outgrowth on the muzzle. When white-nose syndrome takes hold of a hibernating colony, more than 90% of the bats can die (see Disease epidemic killing only US bats). The disease was first documented in February 2006 in a cave in New York, and has spread to at least 16 other US states and four Canadian provinces. The culpability of G. destructans for this sudden outbreak was thrown into question when the fungus was found on healthy bats in Europe, where it is not associated with the grim mortality levels seen in North America1. Some proposed that the fungus was not the primary cause of the catastrophic die offs, and that another factor — such as an undetected virus — must be to blame. But a study published today in Nature2 reveals that G. destructans is indeed guilty. "The fungus alone is sufficient to recreate all the pathology diagnostic for the disease," says David Blehert, a microbiologist at the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, and senior author on the report. Bat-to-bat spread Blehert and his colleagues collected healthy little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) from Wisconsin, which is well beyond the known range of white-nose syndrome. They infected the bats by direct administration of G. destructans spores to the skin or by contact with infected bats from New York. By the end of the 102-day experiment, the tell-tale white fungus was growing on the muzzles and wings of all of the directly infected Wisconsin bats and 16 of the 18 exposed to sick bats. This is the first experimental evidence that white-nose syndrome can be passed from bat to bat, and is very worrying from a conservation point of view because bats huddle together in large numbers in caves and mate in large swarms, says Emma Teeling, a bat biologist at University College Dublin in Ireland. "If a bat has this fungus on them, it's going to spread quickly throughout the population," says Teeling, who was not involved with the study. "It's like a perfect storm." The infected Wisconsin bats did not die during the experiment, which may be due to the limited timeline of infection, the authors suggest. Although the study does not directly show that a healthy bat will die from infection with G. destructans, the results did show that the fungus alone was sufficient to cause lesions diagnostic of white-nose syndrome to form on previously healthy bats, indicating that the fungus is the cause of the deaths so often associated with white-nose syndrome in the wild. To stop a scourge Since it first appeared, white-nose syndrome has behaved like a novel pathogen spreading from a single origin through a naive population, says Jonathan Sleeman, director of the National Wildlife Health Center, who was not involved in the study. Proof that G. destructans is the primary cause of white-nose syndrome will "help us focus our actions or management efforts into the future", he says. Although little can be done to control the spread of the disease through bat-to-bat transmission, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has asked people to stay out of caves in and near affected areas, and has closed some caves on agency-managed land. On 21 October, the FWS announced that up to $1 million in funding will be made available for research on white-nose syndrome. Projects covering topics such as how the fungus proliferates within caves and mines, and the potential for biological means or environmental manipulations to improve bat survival, are among the service's top priorities. * References 1. Puechmaille, S. J. et al. Trends Ecol. Evol. 26, 570-576 (2011). 2. Lorch, J. M. et al. Nature doi:10.1038/nature10590 (2011). - Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com
[Texascavers] Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111026/full/news.2011.613.html Culprit behind bat scourge confirmed A cold-loving fungus is behind an epidemic decimating bat populations in North America. By: Susan Young Researchers have confirmed that a recently identified fungus is responsible for white-nose syndrome, a deadly disease that is sweeping through bat colonies in eastern North America. The fungus, Geomyces destructans, infects the skin of hibernating bats, causing lesions on the animals' wings and a fluffy white outgrowth on the muzzle. When white-nose syndrome takes hold of a hibernating colony, more than 90% of the bats can die (see Disease epidemic killing only US bats). The disease was first documented in February 2006 in a cave in New York, and has spread to at least 16 other US states and four Canadian provinces. The culpability of G. destructans for this sudden outbreak was thrown into question when the fungus was found on healthy bats in Europe, where it is not associated with the grim mortality levels seen in North America1. Some proposed that the fungus was not the primary cause of the catastrophic die offs, and that another factor — such as an undetected virus — must be to blame. But a study published today in Nature2 reveals that G. destructans is indeed guilty. "The fungus alone is sufficient to recreate all the pathology diagnostic for the disease," says David Blehert, a microbiologist at the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, and senior author on the report. Bat-to-bat spread Blehert and his colleagues collected healthy little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) from Wisconsin, which is well beyond the known range of white-nose syndrome. They infected the bats by direct administration of G. destructans spores to the skin or by contact with infected bats from New York. By the end of the 102-day experiment, the tell-tale white fungus was growing on the muzzles and wings of all of the directly infected Wisconsin bats and 16 of the 18 exposed to sick bats. This is the first experimental evidence that white-nose syndrome can be passed from bat to bat, and is very worrying from a conservation point of view because bats huddle together in large numbers in caves and mate in large swarms, says Emma Teeling, a bat biologist at University College Dublin in Ireland. "If a bat has this fungus on them, it's going to spread quickly throughout the population," says Teeling, who was not involved with the study. "It's like a perfect storm." The infected Wisconsin bats did not die during the experiment, which may be due to the limited timeline of infection, the authors suggest. Although the study does not directly show that a healthy bat will die from infection with G. destructans, the results did show that the fungus alone was sufficient to cause lesions diagnostic of white-nose syndrome to form on previously healthy bats, indicating that the fungus is the cause of the deaths so often associated with white-nose syndrome in the wild. To stop a scourge Since it first appeared, white-nose syndrome has behaved like a novel pathogen spreading from a single origin through a naive population, says Jonathan Sleeman, director of the National Wildlife Health Center, who was not involved in the study. Proof that G. destructans is the primary cause of white-nose syndrome will "help us focus our actions or management efforts into the future", he says. Although little can be done to control the spread of the disease through bat-to-bat transmission, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has asked people to stay out of caves in and near affected areas, and has closed some caves on agency-managed land. On 21 October, the FWS announced that up to $1 million in funding will be made available for research on white-nose syndrome. Projects covering topics such as how the fungus proliferates within caves and mines, and the potential for biological means or environmental manipulations to improve bat survival, are among the service's top priorities. * References 1. Puechmaille, S. J. et al. Trends Ecol. Evol. 26, 570-576 (2011). 2. Lorch, J. M. et al. Nature doi:10.1038/nature10590 (2011). - Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com
[Texascavers] Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111026/full/news.2011.613.html Culprit behind bat scourge confirmed A cold-loving fungus is behind an epidemic decimating bat populations in North America. By: Susan Young Researchers have confirmed that a recently identified fungus is responsible for white-nose syndrome, a deadly disease that is sweeping through bat colonies in eastern North America. The fungus, Geomyces destructans, infects the skin of hibernating bats, causing lesions on the animals' wings and a fluffy white outgrowth on the muzzle. When white-nose syndrome takes hold of a hibernating colony, more than 90% of the bats can die (see Disease epidemic killing only US bats). The disease was first documented in February 2006 in a cave in New York, and has spread to at least 16 other US states and four Canadian provinces. The culpability of G. destructans for this sudden outbreak was thrown into question when the fungus was found on healthy bats in Europe, where it is not associated with the grim mortality levels seen in North America1. Some proposed that the fungus was not the primary cause of the catastrophic die offs, and that another factor — such as an undetected virus — must be to blame. But a study published today in Nature2 reveals that G. destructans is indeed guilty. "The fungus alone is sufficient to recreate all the pathology diagnostic for the disease," says David Blehert, a microbiologist at the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, and senior author on the report. Bat-to-bat spread Blehert and his colleagues collected healthy little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) from Wisconsin, which is well beyond the known range of white-nose syndrome. They infected the bats by direct administration of G. destructans spores to the skin or by contact with infected bats from New York. By the end of the 102-day experiment, the tell-tale white fungus was growing on the muzzles and wings of all of the directly infected Wisconsin bats and 16 of the 18 exposed to sick bats. This is the first experimental evidence that white-nose syndrome can be passed from bat to bat, and is very worrying from a conservation point of view because bats huddle together in large numbers in caves and mate in large swarms, says Emma Teeling, a bat biologist at University College Dublin in Ireland. "If a bat has this fungus on them, it's going to spread quickly throughout the population," says Teeling, who was not involved with the study. "It's like a perfect storm." The infected Wisconsin bats did not die during the experiment, which may be due to the limited timeline of infection, the authors suggest. Although the study does not directly show that a healthy bat will die from infection with G. destructans, the results did show that the fungus alone was sufficient to cause lesions diagnostic of white-nose syndrome to form on previously healthy bats, indicating that the fungus is the cause of the deaths so often associated with white-nose syndrome in the wild. To stop a scourge Since it first appeared, white-nose syndrome has behaved like a novel pathogen spreading from a single origin through a naive population, says Jonathan Sleeman, director of the National Wildlife Health Center, who was not involved in the study. Proof that G. destructans is the primary cause of white-nose syndrome will "help us focus our actions or management efforts into the future", he says. Although little can be done to control the spread of the disease through bat-to-bat transmission, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has asked people to stay out of caves in and near affected areas, and has closed some caves on agency-managed land. On 21 October, the FWS announced that up to $1 million in funding will be made available for research on white-nose syndrome. Projects covering topics such as how the fungus proliferates within caves and mines, and the potential for biological means or environmental manipulations to improve bat survival, are among the service's top priorities. * References 1. Puechmaille, S. J. et al. Trends Ecol. Evol. 26, 570-576 (2011). 2. Lorch, J. M. et al. Nature doi:10.1038/nature10590 (2011). - Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com
