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http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111026/full/news.2011.613.html#B2
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature10590.html
-Dean
Dean Wiseman
NSS#32690 RL
Member, NSS Board of Governors
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.
The debate is fuelled, in part, by the assumption that fungal infections in mammals are most commonly associated with immune system dysfunction
BrianC wrote:The debate is fuelled, in part, by the assumption that fungal infections in mammals are most commonly associated with immune system dysfunction
So, there is nothing new in this study than we knew before. The first article That started this post gave the impression that only cultured spores were used, not infected bats? (very bad misleading information)
BrianC wrote:So, there is nothing new in this study than we knew before. The first article That started this post gave the impression that only cultured spores were used, not infected bats? (very bad misleading information)
hewhocaves wrote:The quote you posted, i think, refers to an earlier debate wherein the established line of thinking suggested that a fungus like g. destructans should not be able to affect a new bat unless the new bat was already weakened by something else. This study shows that g. destructans needs no weakened state to be able to affect new bats.
To determine how the fungus could be transferred from one bat to another, the researchers set up two different experiments.
In one, infected bats could mingle with healthy ones. Nearly 90% of the healthy ones had contracted fungal infection three months on.
In the wild, bats appear to transmit the fungus when they "swarm" in vast groups outside the caves where they will hibernate, literally rubbing shoulders and everything else with their fellows, who may be from a different species or a different cave.
In the other experiment, healthy bats and diseased ones were put in neighbouring cages separated by 1.3cm.
Here, the fungus did not spread, indicating that infectious spores are not airborne.
hewhocaves wrote:BrianC wrote:The debate is fuelled, in part, by the assumption that fungal infections in mammals are most commonly associated with immune system dysfunction
So, there is nothing new in this study than we knew before. The first article That started this post gave the impression that only cultured spores were used, not infected bats? (very bad misleading information)
Brian,
This is from the abstract - without the actual article, this is as close as I can get to what was done (I will endeavor to get the article).
"Here we demonstrate that exposure of healthy little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) to pure cultures of G. destructans causes WNS."
It states plainly that little brown bats were exposed to the culture. This is better than just bat-to-bat, because they are able to determine what, specifically, on the bat is causing WNS.
The quote you posted, i think, refers to an earlier debate wherein the established line of thinking suggested that a fungus like g. destructans should not be able to affect a new bat unless the new bat was already weakened by something else. This study shows that g. destructans needs no weakened state to be able to affect new bats.
Pippin wrote:I can't read the entire article but plan to pop by the university library to make a copy. Here's another article that gives a good description of the experiment. I disagree with Brian that this doesn't tell us anything new. It tells us for sure that the bats did get WNS from being in actual physical contact with sick bats, but healthy bats did not get sick from being in a cage next to sick bats with no physical contact. That's a pretty darned good experiment, one that should have been conducted and published years ago...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15460894
This section of the BBC article that I found most interesting:To determine how the fungus could be transferred from one bat to another, the researchers set up two different experiments.
In one, infected bats could mingle with healthy ones. Nearly 90% of the healthy ones had contracted fungal infection three months on.
In the wild, bats appear to transmit the fungus when they "swarm" in vast groups outside the caves where they will hibernate, literally rubbing shoulders and everything else with their fellows, who may be from a different species or a different cave.
In the other experiment, healthy bats and diseased ones were put in neighbouring cages separated by 1.3cm.
Here, the fungus did not spread, indicating that infectious spores are not airborne.
BrianC wrote: So did the bats or did the bats not get exposed to infected bats in this study?
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