Helping Bats Hold On
Posted: Aug 27, 2011 4:35 pmScientists seek a savior as a deadly fungal pandemic explodes through vulnerable colonies
By Janet Raloff
September 10th, 2011; Vol.180 #6 (p. 22
ScienceNews
".....Researchers are now coming to realize that a more apt name for this epidemic might be wing-digesting syndrome.
This fungus doesn’t invade blood vessels and spread the way other fungal species do, explains wildlife pathologist Carol Meteyer, also of the USGS health center in Madison. G. destructans initially starts multiplying on the skin of wings, then shoots hyphae — essentially the body of the fungus — out in all directions, she, Blehert and colleagues reported last year in BMC Biology.
“My assumption is these hyphae are releasing biologically active enzymes because they digest the skin,” Meteyer says. Instead of creating open, oozing sores, the fungi fill in behind the eroding skin. What’s left is a wing with fungal cells increasingly substituting for bat cells.
With a bat’s immunity depressed during hibernation, white-nose syndrome doesn’t elicit redness, swelling or irritation. Only when an animal wakes and its body temperature increases can it begin to fight the fungus. By then it’s usually too late...."
Read on:
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature ... ts_Hold_On
By Janet Raloff
September 10th, 2011; Vol.180 #6 (p. 22
ScienceNews
".....Researchers are now coming to realize that a more apt name for this epidemic might be wing-digesting syndrome.
This fungus doesn’t invade blood vessels and spread the way other fungal species do, explains wildlife pathologist Carol Meteyer, also of the USGS health center in Madison. G. destructans initially starts multiplying on the skin of wings, then shoots hyphae — essentially the body of the fungus — out in all directions, she, Blehert and colleagues reported last year in BMC Biology.
“My assumption is these hyphae are releasing biologically active enzymes because they digest the skin,” Meteyer says. Instead of creating open, oozing sores, the fungi fill in behind the eroding skin. What’s left is a wing with fungal cells increasingly substituting for bat cells.
With a bat’s immunity depressed during hibernation, white-nose syndrome doesn’t elicit redness, swelling or irritation. Only when an animal wakes and its body temperature increases can it begin to fight the fungus. By then it’s usually too late...."
Read on:
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature ... ts_Hold_On