texascavers Digest 28 Oct 2011 17:26:30 -0000 Issue 1426
Topics (messages 18987 through 18995):
Re: Toyota triumphant!
18987 by: Stefan Creaser
18989 by: Don Cooper
18991 by: BMorgan994.aol.com
Re: Study "confirms" Geomyces destructans responsible for WNS
18988 by: Diana Tomchick
18990 by: Julia Germany
18993 by: Mark Minton
Mystery Caver
18992 by: David
Petzl on sale at Karst Sports
18994 by: Mark Minton
BOG succeeds for NSS critical business
18995 by: caverarch
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--- Begin Message ---
You mean you drove all that way for one snake and a couple of lizards? ;-)
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
Despite it being a summer day it was cold as hell up there. There seemed to be
no chance of finding any snakes, but when I complained an ancient cowboy looked
around and pointed at a pine tree. There to my amazement was a little twin
spotted rattlesnake (Crotalus pricei) climbing straight up the tree caterpillar
style. There were also a few cold numbed alligator lizards. Clouds closed in
and we were nearly out of beer so it was time to depart.
-- IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are
confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient,
please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to any
other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the information in any
medium. Thank you.
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
The story itself is the point, not the destination.
(HOW long have you been reading Sleazewheeze's posts on Cave Tex???)
Though not frequently challenged - my 21 yr old S-10 Blazer did turn
200,000 mi the other day.
It's been holding its own while THREE other R-22 Toyota's I know of
have lunched their motors FIVE times.
(Something to be said of old technology - pushrods, low compression
and large displacement.
Maybe I just know how to treat my toys right.)
-WaV
On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 10:29 AM, Stefan Creaser <[email protected]> wrote:
> You mean you drove all that way for one snake and a couple of lizards? ;-)
>
>
>
> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
>
> Despite it being a summer day it was cold as hell up there. There seemed to
> be no chance of finding any snakes, but when I complained an ancient cowboy
> looked around and pointed at a pine tree. There to my amazement was a little
> twin spotted rattlesnake (Crotalus pricei) climbing straight up the tree
> caterpillar style. There were also a few cold numbed alligator lizards.
> Clouds closed in and we were nearly out of beer so it was time to depart.
>
>
>
>
>
> -- IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are
> confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended
> recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the
> contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the
> information in any medium. Thank you.
>
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
Isn't that a good enough reason? Any excuse will do!
Actually that was just the beginning of the adventure. After visiting the
eastern side of the Sierra del Nido I continued south to a very beautiful
area just north of Cumbres de Majalca, took down the fence, went in, hid for
a few days, then again fled with cowboys on my tail.
Then I went around to the western side to the remote and wonderful Rancho
Sierra del Nidoand had many adventures with inbred Mennonites, then headed
up the mountain to join a group of Mexican biologists looking for the last
Mexican wolf.
In a message dated 10/27/2011 11:29:48 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
[email protected] writes:
You mean you drove all that way for one snake and a couple of lizards?
;-)
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
Despite it being a summer day it was cold as hell up there. There seemed
to be no chance of finding any snakes, but when I complained an ancient
cowboy looked around and pointed at a pine tree. There to my amazement was a
little twin spotted rattlesnake (Crotalus pricei) climbing straight up the
tree caterpillar style. There were also a few cold numbed alligator lizards.
Clouds closed in and we were nearly out of beer so it was time to depart.
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
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 thus have an altered immune response)
for the fungus to really be destructive.
If you would like to receive a copy of this paper, email me and I'll forward it
to you.
FYI: the institutions represented by the authors of this paper are: Molecular
and Environmental Toxicology Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison,
Wisconsin; National Wildlife Health Center, US Geological Survey, Madison,
Wisconsin; Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, Madison, Wisconsin;
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Tennessee,
Knoxville, Tennessee; Fort Collins Science Center, US Geological Survey, Fort
Collins, Colorado; New York Department of Environmental Conservation, Albany,
New York; US Fish and Wildlife Service, Hadley, Massachusetts; Wisconsin
Department of Natural Resources, Madison, Wisconsin; Department of Biology,
Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.
Diana
*Koch's postulates are:
• The microorganism must be found in abundance in all organisms
suffering from the disease, but should not be found in healthy organisms.
• The microorganism must be isolated from a diseased organism and grown
in pure culture.
• The cultured microorganism should cause disease when introduced into
a healthy organism.
• The microorganism must be reisolated from the inoculated, diseased
experimental host and identified as being identical to the original specific
causative agent.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Diana R. Tomchick
Professor
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Department of Biochemistry
5323 Harry Hines Blvd.
Rm. ND10.214B
Dallas, TX 75390-8816, U.S.A.
Email: [email protected]
214-645-6383 (phone)
214-645-6353 (fax)
On Oct 26, 2011, at 11:34 PM, <[email protected]>
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,
> [email protected] 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: [email protected]
> For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
>
________________________________
UT Southwestern Medical Center
The future of medicine, today.
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
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 <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
Cc: <[email protected]> <[email protected]>; <[email protected]>
<[email protected]>
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 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 thus have an altered immune response)
for the fungus to really be destructive.
If you would like to receive a copy of this paper, email me and I'll forward it
to you.
FYI: the institutions represented by the authors of this paper are: Molecular
and Environmental Toxicology Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison,
Wisconsin; National Wildlife Health Center, US Geological Survey, Madison,
Wisconsin; Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, Madison, Wisconsin;
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Tennessee,
Knoxville, Tennessee; Fort Collins Science Center, US Geological Survey, Fort
Collins, Colorado; New York Department of Environmental Conservation, Albany,
New York; US Fish and Wildlife Service, Hadley, Massachusetts; Wisconsin
Department of Natural Resources, Madison, Wisconsin; Department of Biology,
Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.
Diana
*Koch's postulates are:
• The microorganism must be found in abundance in all organisms
suffering from the disease, but should not be found in healthy organisms.
• The microorganism must be isolated from a diseased organism and grown
in pure culture.
• The cultured microorganism should cause disease when introduced into
a
healthy organism.
• The microorganism must be reisolated from the inoculated, diseased
experimental host and identified as being identical to the original specific
causative agent.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Diana R. Tomchick
Professor
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Department of Biochemistry
5323 Harry Hines Blvd.
Rm. ND10.214B
Dallas, TX 75390-8816, U.S.A.
Email: [email protected]
214-645-6383 (phone)
214-645-6353 (fax)
On Oct 26, 2011, at 11:34 PM, <[email protected]>
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,
[email protected] 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: [email protected]
> For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
>
________________________________
UT Southwestern Medical Center
The future of medicine, today.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Visit our website: http://texascavers.com
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected]
For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
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, [email protected] 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 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).
Please reply to [email protected]
Permanent email address is [email protected]
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There used to be a thing in the Texas Caver called, "Mystery Caver."
Can anybody out there take a guess at this one:
https://si0.twimg.com/profile_images/1308222742/portrait.JPG
If that is who I think it is, would someone like to post a "What ever
happened to
her....thing ?
David Locklear
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--- Begin Message ---
All Petzl products are currently 20% off at Karst sports
<http://www.karstsports.com/>. As always, shipping is free on orders
over $40. This might be a good time to replace that worn out Croll,
or whatever.
Mark Minton
Please reply to [email protected]
Permanent email address is [email protected]
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--- Begin Message ---
Here is a TAG-NET wrap-up of the BOG Meeting here by one of its members that
talks about the real importance of the gathering: that the meeting was very
successful in terms of transaction of important NSS Business:
2) Highlights from the Houston Board Meeting
By: Dean Wiseman (Indianapolis, Indiana)
[email protected]
Hi everyone,
Just wanted to give you all a quick update on what happened in at the
BOG Meeting in Houston this past weekend...
>From my perspective, I found this meeting to be extraordinarily
productive. It seems that we're beginning to develop a little momentum
on the Board in terms of specific issues, which is a really good sign.
Our OVP, Dave Luckins, announced that we are now in a Purchase Agreement
with the Cahaba Shriners. (HOORAY!) So that part of the HQ is moving forward.
In addition, per request from Board Members, our President, Wm Shrewsbury,
gave us an informal operational cost analysis of what the new site will be
versus what we're currently spending at Cave Avenue.
Those of you who've read the BOG Agenda know most of the items were fairly
straightforward. Some items of note:
1.) The Board created, per request from OVP, a new Archives Division.
This is intended to establish a method of standardization with regard
to images, recordings, collections, etc. This Act will hopefully allow
establishment of Society-wide standards for archiving and retaining
our collections for the future.
2.) Act 01-287 Executive Committee Act Amendment. This Act revised some
language about the Executive Committee Meetings. The larger point of
contention is that this new amendment no longer REQUIRES recently-
leaving Officers be included in correspondence after they leave
office. It was a very close vote that centered around this last
provision, and Wm had to cast the deciding ballot, since the Board
tied 8 for and 8 against.
My take on this Amendment was that, while "Institutional Memory" is an
incredibly valuable thing, it is up to the Incumbent to decide when or
how to best use that Memory. So, rather than making it mandatory--
especially regarding sensitive issues for which a Past Officer may have
a Conflict of Interest--this Amendment allows the Incumbent at least
some discretion. That said, it is hoped that Incumbents will continue to
include former Officers in correspondence most, if not all, of the time.
3.) There was a Motion to restrict alcohol sales at NSS events. This
motion probably would have died for lack of a Second, but was seconded
by the Chairman of the Directorate, as he wanted to get a "sense of
Board Opinion." Those of you who follow CaveChat know that there's
been an interesting discussion thread there.
In any case... the Motion failed by a margin of 15 against and 1 for.
>From my own perspective, I think the NSS has very good, if not exemplary
record of conduct at events where alcohol is served. Secondly, it was
clear to me that the language of the Motion could have been construed in
any number of ways, and an "NSS sponsored activity" could mean just
about anything. This Motion was just asking for trouble...
4.) Another Motion involved setting a policy to bar persons from
attending NSS events if they engage in violent behavior to people or
property during an event. This Motion died for lack of a Second. While
I think the author of this Motion meant well... my take is that the
Board doesn't want to be in the Morality Police Business. Host Grottos
and Regions and IO's can do a much better job of keeping an eye on
this sort of thing, and from my perspective, are doing just fine.
So... those were the most exciting things from Saturday.
Sunday was a lot more fun, though no less work: Strategic Planning
Won't go into all the details, but I think we accomplished more in one
day than basically all the previous meetings where I've been involved,
combined. It helped to have a some outside perspective on how to
prioritize issues in the form of a Professional Strategic Planner. But I
also believe that the previous meetings had been a sort of conceptual
"dry run," if you will, to help us all know where everyone stood.
Now we're on schedule to have a Strategic Plan the Board can approve by
the next BOG Meeting in Atlanta in March/April. It was really, really
cool to see everyone really coalesce on issues, and do it in a
productive, forward-looking way.
Drop me a line if you have questions, or anything you think the BOG
should deal with,
-Dean
Dean Wiseman
NSS#32690 RL
Member, NSS Board of Directors
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