WNS spread spring 2012

[BrianC]

Where is White Nose Syndrome right now, and where will it show up this winter/ spring? The WNS map changed almost negligibly this past year, hopefully showing that its progression has curtailed.

[BrianC]

I should have named this "its that time of the year again" Where will wns show up. I am going to go out on a limb here. I don't think we will see any new sites showing WNS, other than sites that have been missed in past years. I believe that the bats have turned around and have began a recovery. Nature seems to do this when faced with problems. I sure hope that the science doesn't screw this up!

[tncaver]

I sure hope that the science doesn't screw this up!

Does taking 100 healthy bats from one state and and infecting them with WNS in another state after injecting Lamisil under their skin count as science screwing things up? I guess we will just have to wait and see, eh. I think this science isn't a bad way to test an idea, but perhaps
the sample size is a bit large.

[PYoungbaer]

Does taking 100 healthy bats from one state and and infecting them with WNS in another state after injecting Lamisil under their skin count as science screwing things up? I guess we will just have to wait and see, eh. I think this science isn't a bad way to test an idea, but perhaps the sample size is a bit large.

tn: there are four sample groups: control, low dose, medium dose, and high dose, so just 25 bats per. It's actually not a large sample. You can read more of this proposal on the NSS WNS website. Scroll down to Research and click on the 2011 grants. It's NSS WNS grant # 2011-3.

[tncaver]

Thanks for the tidbit of information Peter. I really do hope something good comes from the testing and hopefully they will learn enough to not need to infect more bats with WNS to determine a course of action. I wish more information would become available more often from the rest of the country so that laymen (ie: me and other cavers) could be better informed. My personal bat observations here in Tennessee
have turned up no WNS anywhere, although I see very few if any bats in the caves I go to.