WNS It is what it is

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WNS It is what it is

Postby BrianC » Aug 2, 2011 9:37 pm

After much debate, I see a real need to see a list of real facts pertaining to White Nose Syndrome. There are many of you on both sides of this debate. Only evidence of facts from either facet of the debate without hypothetical input will be considered. List facts from either side providing evidence unless well documented. Absolutely no personal feelings allowed. Scientific, FS, USFWS, and any Bat science personnel are encouraged please! After 30 days a compilation of these facts will be listed in order of relevance to the human denominator. I will start with

Bat to bat transmission of WNS has been documented in laboratory conditions.
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Re: WNS It is what it is

Postby Anonymous_Coward » Aug 3, 2011 8:55 am

I would like to see a list of the so-called "evidence" of human transmission. This "evidence" is alluded to in many articles, and even some official government documents. However, no one has ever felt it necessary to actually describe what constitutes this "evidence."

Would anyone care to list it here?
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Re: WNS It is what it is

Postby Evan G » Aug 3, 2011 9:21 am

I looked around in the scientific published papers for just basic fungal spore transmission via clothing and to my surprise found nothing because I figured someone would bring it up in an argument. Not to say some undergrad didn't do it just I didn't find anything.
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Re: WNS It is what it is

Postby Extremeophile » Aug 3, 2011 9:59 am

I recall Peter posted in another thread a list of "evidence". I believe the spores on gear and clothing was reported in an abstract of a talk given at the Pittsburg WNS meeting in 2010, but nothing has been published in peer reviewed literature.

Just as there's not 100% proof that people spread the disease, there's also not 100% proof that people do not spread the disease. I may be labeled a heretic and cast out of the caving community for saying this, but I don't think we should be putting so much energy and focus on the possibility of human transmission. This is a debate that we could loose as the science develops. If the sole argument for continued access to caves is that humans can not possibly carry the disease, and then it's shown that we can (even under very contrived circumstances), then we loose credibility.

The message needs to focus on the facts that there are a multitude of important reasons to continue allowing cave access, that it's clearly somewhere between extremely difficult and impossible for humans to spread Gd, and that proper managment (e.g. decon, local gear, selective closure of significant bat sites, etc.) effectively minimizes what little risk exists. We need to emphasize that blanket closure is not a balanced approach to wildlife management, and there are many unintended harms.
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Re: WNS It is what it is

Postby BrianC » Aug 3, 2011 10:01 am

Anonymous_Coward wrote:I would like to see a list of the so-called "evidence" of human transmission. This "evidence" is alluded to in many articles, and even some official government documents. However, no one has ever felt it necessary to actually describe what constitutes this "evidence."

Would anyone care to list it here?

The invitation has been issued. The reason I give a 30 day time frame is to give plenty of time for any overwhelming evidence to be listed.
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Re: WNS It is what it is

Postby BrianC » Aug 3, 2011 10:06 am

Here is a good one. There is zero WNS in the heart of TAG, the most popular caving area in the USA, and probably the world.
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Re: WNS It is what it is

Postby John Lovaas » Aug 3, 2011 11:28 am

Andy-

I'll bite.

Can cavers transport any spores whatsoever? Only experiment to support human transport of the fungus that is an unpublished item by NYDEC's Joe Okoniewski- The citation is on page 17 of this PDF-

http://www.fws.gov/WhiteNoseSyndrome/pd ... ersFor.pdf

Short story- person enters mine with clean gear. WNS extirpated the bats the precious hibernation season. 16 spores were isolated from the person's gear, all 16 spores were viable. IMPORTANT CAVEAT- do we know how virulent the fungus is? Do we know the Multiplicity of Infection? Do we know many spores are needed in order to get a viable mycelium growing on a bat? NO. Is there an experiment that demonstrates that Gd will grow and produce spores in cave sediments? NO. Can we aerosolize the spores and infect bats? NO. More on those two points further on here.

Has bat to bat transmission been documented- yes. Has physical application of the fungus to bats been successful in the lab? Barely. Have experiments aerolizing the spores of the fungus to infect bats been successful? NO. Still waiting for the USGS paper on the second round of infection studies in Madison to be published- itwas to go to press in December 2010, but nothing yet.

Hibernating Wisconsin bats were bundled into socks, loaded into coolers, and driven to Vermont, where they were introduced into a mine where WNS had destroyed the colony the previous season. Some of these (slightly stressed?) WI bats did contract WNS- but the bulk of them simply died of 'indeterminate causes'.

Citation here: viewtopic.php?f=58&t=10670&p=91391&hilit=+david#p91391

Have we found Gd spores in cave sediments- yes. But only underneath bat roosts where WNS had killed all the bats, or directly underneath bats that had died of WNS. Citation: "DNA-based detection of the fungal pathogen Geomyces destructans in soils from bat hibernacula" in Mycologia, 2010.

Do Gd spores persist in cave sediments? All personal communications and unpublished reports say NO. In the recent Microbe article on Gd:

http://www.microbemagazine.org/index.ph ... th-america

there was this sentence:

"...G. destructans likely does not require bat hosts to survive and can persist in caves by exploiting other nutrients..."

Would you think that is a statement of fact? It is not- it is speculation, per the primary author of the paper. No experimental evidence currently supports that statement.

Could the spores persist on roosting surfaces for some period of time? Sure. Less competition for nutrients, fewer microbial pathogens. A good reason for deconning our gear.

Can humans actually transport the fungus to other caves? The old saw about Howe's Caverns- where it didn't show up- has been beaten to death. The whole truth is that the first photograph of a bat with WNS was taken in February 2005- but by the winter of 2005-2006, there was a tight cluster of 5 caves with bats exhibiting WNS. How did it get to those NY caves? I sure do like speculating about the deep sea port in Albany, rather than apocryphal tourists at a commercial cave, or a completely fabricated story about French scientists caving during the 2005 NCKMS. An utter lie that was propogated by Northeast bat biologists and agencies personnel for- years. Strange that no one was ever curious about interviewing the "French scientists", or identifying the New York caves they visited, or the European caves they visited before they visited the New York caves... that would have been useful data, if not for the whole f*****g story being made up.

The Oklahoma bat? This February, I had to listen to a WI DNR land manager tell the state legislature's natural resources committee that "it was proven that the Oklahoma bat got WNS from human transmission". Which, as I later pointed out to the natural resources committee, was a lie- no one knows how the fungus got to Oklahoma- the bat was destroyed during testing in Madison. That bat's DNA would have been very valuable in the future- what clade did it belong to? WE DO NOT KNOW. In addition- the bat tested positive for the fungus, but met no criteria for having WNS. Did the bat come from a nearby infected colony? Did cavers bring the fungus into a cave that was otherwise closed to everything but bats counts and research? Did the bat migrate a long distance from an unidentified infected hibernacula in the Ozarks, or hitch a ride on an RV, truck, or freight container? WE DO NOT KNOW. What does the Oklahoma bat prove? NOTHING. Merely an observation that one bat in Oklahoma has tested positive for Gd- and that sucks.

The other human transmission saw is "New York cavers brought the fungus from New York to PA/VA/W. VA". There are trip logs and reports that have Northeast cavers going from WNS positive caves to caves in the Virginias- as well as 28 other states- with muddy gear.

The specific citation agency personnel have used is a paragraph in an article by Greg Turner and DeeAnn Reeder in Bat Research News; vol. 50, no. 3- Fall 2009. I have a copy of the article, but I don't have permission to quote from it. There must be some bat folks in your neighborhood that receive the newsletter.

I'll summarize the (footnote-free) paragraph in this way- the move couldn't be explained by bat movement because most of the sites were small hibernacula, and that while it was possible for an individual infected bat to migrate a long distance to a small hibernacula, multiple infected bats could not fly to multiple small hibernacula that were adjacent to larger hibernacula, and most of the sites had high recreational use.

Well- what do we know today about hibernacula, Gd, and WNS? We know that bats can carry the fungus, yet not show any symptoms of the syndrome, and we know that different hibernacula- even adjacent ones- can demonstrate different infection rates. We also know that many of these sites where the PA/VA/WVA surveys found WNS hadn't been surveyed in two years. I would speculate that if there hadn't been regular surveys for WNS, it would be careless to tie the appearance of WNS to a specific event or action.

That's all the "evidence" I can think of at the moment. I know lots of good bat biologists and good agency personnel who don't see this collection as "likely" or "evdience"- but merely an indication we have a long way to go in reaching an understanding of the epidemiology of WNS. But there are a few bat biologists, people pretending to be bat biologists, and agency personnel who have taken Science into the woods, tied it to a tree, and cut its arms and legs off, and are quite pleased with how important and powerful they have become.
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Re: WNS It is what it is

Postby BrianC » Aug 3, 2011 11:54 am

Extremeophile wrote:I recall Peter posted in another thread a list of "evidence". I believe the spores on gear and clothing was reported in an abstract of a talk given at the Pittsburg WNS meeting in 2010, but nothing has been published in peer reviewed literature.

Just as there's not 100% proof that people spread the disease, there's also not 100% proof that people do not spread the disease. I may be labeled a heretic and cast out of the caving community for saying this, but I don't think we should be putting so much energy and focus on the possibility of human transmission. This is a debate that we could loose as the science develops. If the sole argument for continued access to caves is that humans can not possibly carry the disease, and then it's shown that we can (even under very contrived circumstances), then we loose credibility.

The message needs to focus on the facts that there are a multitude of important reasons to continue allowing cave access, that it's clearly somewhere between extremely difficult and impossible for humans to spread Gd, and that proper managment (e.g. decon, local gear, selective closure of significant bat sites, etc.) effectively minimizes what little risk exists. We need to emphasize that blanket closure is not a balanced approach to wildlife management, and there are many unintended harms.

This thread is not about hypothetical issues, rather focuses on reality!
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Re: WNS It is what it is

Postby DeanWiseman » Aug 3, 2011 12:15 pm

Extremeophile wrote:Just as there's not 100% proof that people spread the disease, there's also not 100% proof that people do not spread the disease. I may be labeled a heretic and cast out of the caving community for saying this, but I don't think we should be putting so much energy and focus on the possibility of human transmission. This is a debate that we could loose as the science develops. If the sole argument for continued access to caves is that humans can not possibly carry the disease, and then it's shown that we can (even under very contrived circumstances), then we loose credibility.



I promise to not label you a heretic, as many share your view. However, I do disagree that it is not in our best interest to continue this debate. I think these discussions, in a sort of way, are a "peer review" not unlike certain discussions which occur in Open Access Journals (i.e. PloS ONE)... everyone has a certain expertise, and good science should withstand criticism.

Secondly, I think it IS important to point out the Research Community's shortcomings when it comes to the type of work they are publishing. A really, really big gap in the knowledge about WNS is what the relative transmission risk is from humans. Having a handle on just that would give us a real benefit in terms of how much effort should be devoted at harsh decontamination and/or quarantine policies, and will help policy-makers craft (hopefully) well-reasoned policies.


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Re: WNS It is what it is

Postby BrianC » Aug 3, 2011 2:33 pm

Thanks Dean, and so we continue.
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Re: WNS It is what it is

Postby Extremeophile » Aug 3, 2011 4:57 pm

DeanWiseman wrote:I promise to not label you a heretic, as many share your view. However, I do disagree that it is not in our best interest to continue this debate. I think these discussions, in a sort of way, are a "peer review" not unlike certain discussions which occur in Open Access Journals (i.e. PloS ONE)... everyone has a certain expertise, and good science should withstand criticism.

Secondly, I think it IS important to point out the Research Community's shortcomings when it comes to the type of work they are publishing. A really, really big gap in the knowledge about WNS is what the relative transmission risk is from humans. Having a handle on just that would give us a real benefit in terms of how much effort should be devoted at harsh decontamination and/or quarantine policies, and will help policy-makers craft (hopefully) well-reasoned policies.

All valid points Dean. I wasn't suggesting that we not further explore or challenge the science behind the human vector. I just believe that too often the argument or strategy for keeping caves open is based solely on the impossibility of human transmission. Though I suppose if someone were close-minded enough to believe it's impossible then no other argument would be needed.

BrianC wrote: and so we continue.

Yes, now back to your agenda.
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Re: WNS It is what it is

Postby wyandottecaver » Aug 3, 2011 5:07 pm

Peter had an outstanding article in the NSS News a while back clearly listing and documenting the actual studies and data available. I wont repeat it here but encourage EVERYONE to actually read it.

Fact:
You can only prove human transmission for each specific set of circumstances tested, must be able to rule out EVERY other vector except humans, and must repeat each test ad naseum to get a frequency of transmission. The exact same is true for proving the absence of transmission. Therefore it is the "perfect" argument for both sides to use because it effectively CANT be proven either way in the real world.

Fact:
Public access Policy and Management aren't science and neither is politics. Sometimes science is used, sometimes not. Virtually none of the WNS guidelines or policies are truly science driven including closures and for that matter decon. Neither are likely to work if GD *is* transmissable by people, but make us feel better cause we are doing something.

Therefore the discussion of the science of human transmission is mostly irrelevant to the discussion of WNS policy. The CBD has had great impact on policy with virtually no real science. What is going to be relevant is making sure the policy makers with actual power are aware of us as a vocal and active interest group that isn't going away.
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Re: WNS It is what it is

Postby BrianC » Aug 3, 2011 7:59 pm

wyandottecaver wrote:

Therefore the discussion of the science of human transmission is mostly irrelevant to the discussion of WNS policy. The CBD has had great impact on policy with virtually no real science. What is going to be relevant is making sure the policy makers with actual power are aware of us as a vocal and active interest group that isn't going away.


Lets get this study out of the way, and they will have information with relevance to what they have closed caves over. Wink! :grin:
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Re: WNS It is what it is

Postby wyandottecaver » Aug 4, 2011 4:29 pm

perhaps you missed the part about it being unproovable?
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Re: WNS It is what it is

Postby John Lovaas » Aug 4, 2011 5:16 pm

wyandottecaver wrote:Peter had an outstanding article in the NSS News a while back clearly listing and documenting the actual studies and data available. I wont repeat it here but encourage EVERYONE to actually read it.


Thank you for bring that up, Todd- I got a copy of that article in February, and was referring to it, along with other stuff Peter had written- as I cobbled my rant together; doh.

The article appeared in the April 2011 NSS News, and is archived at the NSS WNS website-

http://www.caves.org/WNS/NSS%20News%20a ... 202011.pdf

Everything there is to know.
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