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Bats.
16 years ago
It seems as time passes, complications occur and disappear with the few things they complicate as natural and engineered solutions are found and administered.
White-nose syndrom is a terrifying fungus that has a very simple way of disturbing our ecosystems. As we all should know, bats are the #1 consumer of night-time flying insects. Bats also pollinate various flowers, some exclusive to bats! The removal of bats on these specific and well developed ecosystems would be drastic! And for these reasons, people have been calling WNS an ecological catastrophe.
Bats hibernate in damp, cold caves. This is the perfect environment for a myriad of fungi, which bats have been living along side, unharmed, for centuries. This newly introduced fungi thrives on the hairless portions of bats. When first discovered, the fungi had been growing on the noses and muzzles of bats, hence the token name. WNS, as any fungus growing on live tissue, irritates the creature it is on. Anyone who's had athlete's foot could agree that it not a comfortable condition.
When hibernating, bats will wake 4-5 times through the winter to groom then go back to sleep. However, the fungus growing on them irritates and itches, causing bats to wake quite often during the hibernating season to itch. A bat's fat stores cannot sustain the constant waking, and bats will grow hungry and leave the cave in mid winter to find food, usually dieing of starvation, dehydration, or just the freezing cold.
Unfortunately, this is a wildfire of a disease. If bird flu infected a chicken farm, there'd be a perimiter around the farm and all chickens in that perimeter would be exterminated and the grounds purged. This wildfire is a bit different though. There are many species of fungi in the affected caves, as well as other creatures which may or may not only live in 2 caves in the entire world. These complications make a simple purging unsustainable. What's worse is that the infection has been spreading south, toward the southeast and midwest. In particular are the endangered Indiana bats.
I've always been enthusiastic about conservation. This event, research and all that I've put into it, has introduced me to Bat Conservation International, or BCI. As such, I immediately became a member. Perhaps I'll become more physically involved in the future, rather then just using my mind from a great distance. We shall see.
White-nose syndrom is a terrifying fungus that has a very simple way of disturbing our ecosystems. As we all should know, bats are the #1 consumer of night-time flying insects. Bats also pollinate various flowers, some exclusive to bats! The removal of bats on these specific and well developed ecosystems would be drastic! And for these reasons, people have been calling WNS an ecological catastrophe.
Bats hibernate in damp, cold caves. This is the perfect environment for a myriad of fungi, which bats have been living along side, unharmed, for centuries. This newly introduced fungi thrives on the hairless portions of bats. When first discovered, the fungi had been growing on the noses and muzzles of bats, hence the token name. WNS, as any fungus growing on live tissue, irritates the creature it is on. Anyone who's had athlete's foot could agree that it not a comfortable condition.
When hibernating, bats will wake 4-5 times through the winter to groom then go back to sleep. However, the fungus growing on them irritates and itches, causing bats to wake quite often during the hibernating season to itch. A bat's fat stores cannot sustain the constant waking, and bats will grow hungry and leave the cave in mid winter to find food, usually dieing of starvation, dehydration, or just the freezing cold.
Unfortunately, this is a wildfire of a disease. If bird flu infected a chicken farm, there'd be a perimiter around the farm and all chickens in that perimeter would be exterminated and the grounds purged. This wildfire is a bit different though. There are many species of fungi in the affected caves, as well as other creatures which may or may not only live in 2 caves in the entire world. These complications make a simple purging unsustainable. What's worse is that the infection has been spreading south, toward the southeast and midwest. In particular are the endangered Indiana bats.
I've always been enthusiastic about conservation. This event, research and all that I've put into it, has introduced me to Bat Conservation International, or BCI. As such, I immediately became a member. Perhaps I'll become more physically involved in the future, rather then just using my mind from a great distance. We shall see.
If not, this is a natural occurrence, and the species that cannot adapt are sadly at a disadvantage. But those who are not affected will move in on the territories and the whole process of evolution will start again. These are sad occurrences, but it is nature, and we have a bad habit of making things worse when we intervene many times.
The only bat that are endangered by these are the 20 something out of the 40 something bat species in the US that hibernate. The other bats do not hibernate, and therefore would not take up residence in these caves. There is concern for something like this because bats bring outside nutrients into cave systems that would otherwise be desolate.Various insects, fungi and reptiles depend on them in order to survive, Some that only exist in maybe two of these caves in the entire world.
I just woke up, so my brain isn't fully functioning at the moment, but whichever agency deals with endangered animals is provoked to take action under whatever their protocol is that requires them to protect endangered species. Indiana bats are one of these, the cave ecosystems that are rare commodities now, are another.