All,
Just for the record, back on Oct. 4, 2010, I posted this reply to cavergirl in the thread entitled, "Oklahoma Bat:"
Anne Ballman, of the USGS lab in Madison, Wisconsin, which did the analysis, provided more detail. Basically, while the bat showed fungal colonization on the skin of the bat, it showed no lesions (pathological invasion into the skin tissues). Further, it didn't show any of the tell-tale curved conidia. Ballman says that fungi can produce hyphae without conidia. Also, she said that there were other fungi on the bat, also not unusual, so that the colonization may not have been from the WNS fungus, or the conidia may have been inadvertently knocked off the bat during handling. So, no other clinical signs, but the Geomyces destructans fungus was confirmed by genetic sequencing, and the PCR was run with positive and negative controls.
I had inquired of Anne Ballman after reading the ProMed report of the findings, and specifically asked about the possibility of a false positive. The significance of running the PCR with both positive and negative controls eliminates the possibility. Thus, with G.d. confirmed genetically, but no histology, the Oklahoma site "earned" the USGS classification of "suspect," consistent with similar findings at other sites. Just for the record.