Five years ago, there were six and a half million little brown bats in the Northeastern United States. In 2020, there may be next to none.
This week in Science, a study models the collapse in bat populations brought on by white-nose syndrome, which was first found in 2006 and is seemingly caused by a nasty fungus. Researchers think that bats with the affliction awaken too early from hibernation, messing up their natural cycles and draining their reserves of energy. A team led by Winifred Frick checked the math on bat population decline and found that they could be locally extinct in many parts of the United States by 2020.
The loss of all these bats would be bad for us, not just them, because they like to dine on pesky insects. So far, researchers have little idea how to cure diseased bats or stop the blight from spreading. The U.S. Forest Service last month proposed to close off abandoned mines in several states, hoping to protect the bats who live in them from the disease. For more about the bats, check out Ed Yong’s Not Exactly Rocket Science.
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Not Exactly Rocket Science: Pocket Science – lessons from spongy genomes, and a deadly bat-killing disease
Image: Al Hicks, NY DEC
August 6th, 2010 at 2:27 pm
That’s a very hopeful position, actually – I’ve heard talk of the extinction event being continent-wide. Extinction in the Northeast alone would be far preferable.
August 6th, 2010 at 7:14 pm
Let’s hope the little critters evolve some fungal resistance. They seem to be getting hammered right now.
August 8th, 2010 at 3:58 pm
Talk about canaries in a coal mine! Populations that took millions of years to develop, surviving countless cataclysms, are going from sustainable to extinct before our eyes and at our hands. It’s as if that song about the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees- has become a dirge.