USGS announces cause for WNS

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Re: USGS announces cause for WNS

Postby BrianC » Oct 27, 2011 9:56 am

I find it very interesting that the same people that can't stand any information provoking thought that humans don't spread WNS continue to gripe when science is finally getting to the truth. Is it money, money, money, money, moneeeeeey, monnneeeey? Or do they just hate humans? Or both? :rofl:
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Re: USGS announces cause for WNS

Postby tncaver » Oct 27, 2011 10:17 am

Perhaps another study should be conducted to see if infected bats must touch "specific" body parts to spread the disease such as mouth or genitals or can it be spread by bats simply touching wings. A study could also be conducted to determine how much airflow (if at all possible) would it take to spread WNS via airborne particles. The information could be refined to help understand just how difficult it is for humans to spread WNS. Anyone up for this research?

Seriously, this research needs to be done.
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Re: USGS announces cause for WNS

Postby John Lovaas » Oct 27, 2011 10:34 am

ron_miller wrote:It apparently took three years of trials before researchers could even get bat-to-bat transmission to work in a lab setting


I doubt that is correct. The USGS Wildlife lab was successful with bat-to-bat transmission in their 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 experiments. Geomyces destructans didn't even have a name until the spring of 2009. They also had no success with aerosol transmission in the 2009-2010 study. They originally reported one positive result, but David Blehert informed me that the result was actually a false positive PCR result.

ron_miller wrote:Second, and more importantly, we already know from other studies that bats can contract WNS solely from an infected environment, without the possibility of ANY contact with infected bats (Hicks and others, 2010 - healthy bats from Wisconsin, introduced into two known WNS-affected mines in Vermont from which all other bats were excluded, still contracted WNS).


You are misquoting a poorly designed experiment that has not been published, so far as I know. Hibernating Wisconsin bats were loaded into coolers and placed in northeast hiberancula that had been wiped out by WNS. There are serious questions about the experiment. What about a control group? Should some of the bats have been placed in a sterile hibernacula in Madison as a disease control? And the 1300 mile car ride wrapped up in a sock can't be a great way to start a long winter's sleep. If you look at the raw numbers, around 25% of all the transplanted bats just died. No fungus required. Which makes your bat sample less than ideal.
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Re: USGS announces cause for WNS

Postby BrianC » Oct 27, 2011 10:35 am

tncaver wrote:Perhaps another study should be conducted to see if infected bats must touch "specific" body parts to spread the disease such as mouth or genitals or can it be spread by bats simply touching wings. A study could also be conducted to determine how much airflow (if at all possible) would it take to spread WNS via airborne particles. The information could be refined to help understand just how difficult it is for humans to spread WNS. Anyone up for this research?

Seriously, this research needs to be done.


The fact that Gd was dropped onto the face of the bats in the test, could it be that bats cleaning themselves ingested the Gd and it caused a bacterial/viral resistance issue? Then the bats through direct contact spread this to the rest of the flock? Back to the other potential reasoning of weakened state. All still very reasonably possible, considering how the test was performed.
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Re: USGS announces cause for WNS

Postby tncaver » Oct 27, 2011 11:06 am

[quote="John Lovaas"They also had no success with aerosol transmission in the 2009-2010 study. They(ie: USGS) originally reported one positive result, but David Blehert informed me that the result was actually a false positive PCR result. [/quote]

The aerosol study would seem to indicate that once again WNS is not spread by air borne means. That still leaves the question as to what bat body parts
must come into contact with GD for it to spread. Mouth seems most likely as that is where the white fungus was first detected. Do bats groom each
other and can the fungus be spread by mouth to body contact or must it be mouth to mouth, or mouth to other areas? I highly doubt any humans are
kissing bats. :rofl: Perhaps the CBD does think so. :rofl:
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Re: USGS announces cause for WNS

Postby BrianC » Oct 27, 2011 11:21 am

[quote="tncaver"] I highly doubt any humans are
kissing bats. :rofl: Perhaps the CBD does think so. :rofl:
:funny post:
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Re: USGS announces cause for WNS

Postby Hazel » Oct 27, 2011 1:18 pm

All,

I appreciate the debate regarding the recent Nature paper by Blehert et al., and the informed statements made by many on this board. It's reassuring to read how much knowledge of microbiology and mycology has been assimilated by the caving community to educate themselves on this subject.

I would like to say that the aim of David's study was to confirm Koch's postulates - which was remarkably challenging to do, given both the difficulty in taking bats into artificial hibernacula, the difficulty of growing Gd under these conditions, and the long time frames taken for the mortality seen in WNS. Given all these factors, the statement regarding airborne spread, based on the conditions it was carried out under, was a neutral statement.

The data generated relates to bat-to-bat transfer, it in no way indicates that anthropomorphic spread is not possible. We know that Gd can be found in the environment where WNS bats have been found (DNA-based detection of the fungal pathogen Geomyces destructans in soils from bat hibernacula
Daniel L. Lindner, Andrea Gargas, Jeffrey M. Lorch, Mark T. Banik, Jessie Glaeser, Thomas H. Kunz, and David S. Blehert
Mycologia 2011 103:241-246) and that naive bats placed in an environment that contains Gd will succumb to WNS (that study has already been discussed on this board).

It does not mean that we no longer need to decontaminate. It does mean, as Tim Williams stated, human impact is "likely minimal and can be managed with decontamination'. It is important that we continue to work with land managers and the public to ensure that we continue to decontaminate until additional information becomes available.

Science does not proceed based on negative data and hence we are working on determining what role, if any, that humans play in the spread of WNS. We have a large grant from the USFWS to do this and the work is currently ongoing.

Hazel

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Re: USGS announces cause for WNS

Postby BrianC » Oct 27, 2011 1:48 pm

Hazel wrote:
Science does not proceed based on negative data and hence we are working on determining what role, if any, that humans play in the spread of WNS. We have a large grant from the USFWS to do this and the work is currently ongoing.

Hazel


Hazel, Thank you very much for your insight into this study. I do however ask , Why do you say that information gained here shows a negative on human impact? The real negative appears to be calling humans suspect in the transmission. By the way, did you find a student willing to take this study on yet? A number of months ago, your web page cited that you were in need of locating a graduate student for this task.
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Re: USGS announces cause for WNS

Postby Teresa » Oct 27, 2011 2:14 pm

Hi All...I'm doing my bit:
Reposted USGS news release verbatim: http://rhtrav.com/wordpress/usgs-announ ... s-in-bats/

Added linked commentary, with a reference linked back here: http://rhtrav.com/wordpress/usgs-study- ... able-news/

Both these are available on Facebook, too, as anything I post to the Traveler blog also goes on the Traveler FB page.
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Re: USGS announces cause for WNS

Postby Hazel » Oct 27, 2011 2:16 pm

Brian, I'm not quite sure what you mean by this " Why do you say that information gained here shows a negative on human impact?"

I didn't say anything about human impact, I said that science does not proceed on negative data. The experiment with air dispersal didn't work - given the conditions and limitations on the experiment it doesn't show anything, one way or the other.

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Re: USGS announces cause for WNS

Postby DeanWiseman » Oct 27, 2011 2:25 pm

Hazel wrote:It does not mean that we no longer need to decontaminate. It does mean, as Tim Williams stated, human impact is "likely minimal and can be managed with decontamination'. It is important that we continue to work with land managers and the public to ensure that we continue to decontaminate until additional information becomes available.


:yeah that: :exactly: :thanks:

Hazel wrote:The experiment with air dispersal didn't work - given the conditions and limitations on the experiment it doesn't show anything, one way or the other.


But it DOES begin to cast reasonable doubt on aerial dispersion as a likely mechanism. I see this as analogous to the HIV-in-saliva conundrum of years past. Animal housing costs aside (I don't even want to ask what the animal housing per diem is), where does one go to refine the experiment? I suppose wind tunnels, but then again, that seems to depart from conditions in hibernacula.


:bat sticker:
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Re: USGS announces cause for WNS

Postby BrianC » Oct 27, 2011 2:28 pm

[quote="Teresa"][/quote]
http://rhtrav.com/wordpress/usgs-study-good-science-questionable-news/

Very understandably written, and the exact impact needed for the public to hear!
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Re: USGS announces cause for WNS

Postby Chuck Porter » Oct 27, 2011 2:56 pm

Last night John Tudek posted:
The evidence that it was a bat that brought it is circumstantial only.. It goes along this line:
1. New York City is the closest, largest port to Europe.
2. Albany is the closest regional distribution center to NYC.
3. Containers aren't opened until they reach a regional center (and are split up into smaller shipments).
4. In the years following 9/11, monitoring of imports dwindled (with a low in about 2005, coincident with the exposure of bats (which manifested in Feb 2006).
5. Commercial caves are frequently the most photographed, leading them to be preferentially selected as the initial site. (which means it may have been in a couple other caves, but there is no documentation).


Just to clarify: The Hudson River is dredged 30 feet deep to the Port of Albany, which receives 60 or 80 ocean-going ships a year. From there it's 33 miles to Howes Cave. So a European bat could have jumped ship and flown to Howes Cave.
The bats with WNS in Feb 2006 were photographed by a caver in the old Howes Cave section, downstream of the Howe Caverns tourist operation. Always-on exhaust fans move air from the tourist section into this downstream section. There are some gaps around the fans but it's unlikely that a bat would fly into the tourist section, let alone be touched by a European tourist with G.d. spores.
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Re: USGS announces cause for WNS

Postby BrianC » Oct 27, 2011 3:21 pm

Hazel wrote:Brian, I'm not quite sure what you mean by this " Why do you say that information gained here shows a negative on human impact?"

I didn't say anything about human impact, I said that science does not proceed on negative data. The experiment with air dispersal didn't work - given the conditions and limitations on the experiment it doesn't show anything, one way or the other.

Hazel


Hazel sorry about not being clear. Since there is no data that would support or even suggest that humans in any way spread White Nose Syndrome, and this study clearly supports how the syndrome is transmitted ( bat to bat), then to study the human transmission theory is trying to prove a negative. What would make very good sense, is to go with what is clear and supported by study, and run with it. Any other study would be exactly what you are saying can't be accomplished, prove a negative======= The human transmission theory would do that, try to prove a negative.
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Re: USGS announces cause for WNS

Postby tncaver » Oct 27, 2011 3:28 pm

I see no need for a wind tunnel. So long as wind/air speed is recorded, a simple fan might suffice. However, it might be difficult to create a constant wind speed as low as that observed in most caves. The wind speed in most caves (not counting constrictions such as a small entrance area) are almost imperceptible. There are devices that can measure the wind speed even at very low speeds.
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