Intentional WNS spread?

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Intentional WNS spread?

Postby GroundquestMSA » Feb 7, 2013 11:07 pm

I've read through the entire wns subforum in the past and don't remember seeing anything on this. I didn't follow all of the links so I could have missed a lot.

Have there been any scientific efforts to intentionally spread WNS by means of normal caving activities? I can think of some problems with such a plan (Is it ok to potentially sacrifice a healthy batch of bats? If WNS shows up how do we know if researchers spread it, for examples) but it seems like with everything else that's been tried, someone would have attempted it. Just curious.
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Re: Intentional WNS spread?

Postby Myrna Attaway » Feb 8, 2013 12:06 am

No but lots of research has been done to determine if cave gear can carry spores and the answere is yes. That is why we have decontamination procedures.
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Re: Intentional WNS spread?

Postby John Lovaas » Feb 8, 2013 6:41 am

Myrna-

To be fair, the correct answer to the question is yes, some research has been done, and there is no smoking gun.

- aerosolization of Gd spores in the lab has resulted on zero infected bats.

- while Gd spores can persist in environments where there isn't much competition from other fungi, no one has demonstrated that Gd can produce hyphae or spores in a cave sediment media, or on roosting surfaces in caves and mines.

- in the one experiment where cave gear was sampled for Gd spores, 16 viable spores were isolated from the gear set. At the Madison, WI WNS Symposium last year, the 'standard' dosage for infecting bats in the lab was a 2ml slurry containing 150,000 spores, applied directly to the bat's back.

I would completely agree with the opinion that handling an infected bat, then handling an uninfected bat, could be an effective human-bat vector. The only people I know who handle bats are dumb white trash and bat workers.

I've been using 409 on my gear since 2003, because I don't like the idea of mammal feces and urine(and associated pathogens) in my house. That's why I decon. Call me Felix Unger.
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Re: Intentional WNS spread?

Postby PYoungbaer » Feb 8, 2013 9:06 am

Have there been any scientific efforts to intentionally spread WNS by means of normal caving activities?


No - not directly. There is one major transmission study being conducted by Dr. Hazel Barton that is looking at the likelihood of human vector through examining the various materials and activities bat researchers and cavers routinely use and do.

In other words, for a bat researcher who intentionally handles bats, what materials and equipment are they using; for a caver, who doesn't, what materials and equipment are they using? Common sense tells us that the former is more likely to be encountering spores in higher quantities. However, caving coveralls, for example, might be more likely to hold spores than Tyvec. That's the level of detail the study proposed. If I understand the timeline of the study, the work should be done and the analysis and publication in the works.

Other than this research, there is not much else. One oral presentation was made at a conference a couple years ago where a cave pack used by a bat researcher did have some viable spores that were cultured in a lab. I'm not aware of any published studies on the subject.

John Lovass cites the aerosolized study - that's the one where G.d. was proven to be the cause of WNS. It was a series of bats in various chambers in a lab, and only bat to bat contact has proven to transmit the disease. Indeed, a more recent study by kate Langwig (NSF) noted that Little Brown bats have altered their roosting behavior to avoid the dense colonies they formerly used. She speculates this may be a survival response to avoid the bat to bat contact that transmits the disease. One other study (USGS) demonstrated that G.d. can persist in the cave sediments/soils without a host bat. They found several samples in WNS-affected caves, but not in all of them, and none in non-WNS caves.

Other studies have shown that G.d. is quickly overwhelmed by other Geomyces and other fungi when in the cave environment if not on a bat. G.d. is also difficult to culture in the lab as it's also overwhelmed by the other fungi, and needs to be isolated.

It's important to remember the disease triangle: susceptible host, sufficient pathogen, supportive environment. Without all three in the right mix and under the right conditions, there is no disease.
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Re: Intentional WNS spread?

Postby wyandottecaver » Feb 8, 2013 9:24 am

The very very important aspect of the "cave pack" study is that it was essentially a setup. (perhaps why it was never published for peer review) Researchers went into the WNS cave intending to gather and test whether spores could be picked up by gear and immediately upon exiting took samples and placed them into protective media designed to preserve GD. They proved that gear could get GD as far as a cave entrance...where it likely existed in the first place. Hardly a real test under real conditions.
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Re: Intentional WNS spread?

Postby Extremeophile » Feb 8, 2013 10:19 am

wyandottecaver wrote:The very very important aspect of the "cave pack" study is that it was essentially a setup. (perhaps why it was never published for peer review) Researchers went into the WNS cave intending to gather and test whether spores could be picked up by gear and immediately upon exiting took samples and placed them into protective media designed to preserve GD. They proved that gear could get GD as far as a cave entrance...where it likely existed in the first place. Hardly a real test under real conditions.

And this hardly qualifies as "lots of research".
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Re: Intentional WNS spread?

Postby GroundquestMSA » Feb 8, 2013 10:46 am

So could anything be learned by sending ten groups of people through an infected cave, and then through a clean cave soon afterward? Or is the environment so uncontrolled that scientific observations would be impossible?
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Re: Intentional WNS spread?

Postby GroundquestMSA » Feb 8, 2013 11:02 am

Aside,
John Lovaas wrote:The only people I know who handle bats are dumb white trash and bat workers.

I'm not sure there's a need to be insulting. Ignorance hardly makes a person deserving of such a slur. I touches a bat once (on purpose, several bats have touched me on accident) and I learned a big lesson. I was a little kid and I think we were caving in the wintertime. I prodded the little thing and it dropped into the stream where it twitched a few times and died.
The point is that people might do the wrong thing because they had no idea that it was the wrong thing. Not because they are dirty, stupid, criminal, disrespectful, dangerous, and anti-social.
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Re: Intentional WNS spread?

Postby PYoungbaer » Feb 9, 2013 10:12 am

wyandottecaver wrote:The very very important aspect of the "cave pack" study is that it was essentially a setup. (perhaps why it was never published for peer review) Researchers went into the WNS cave intending to gather and test whether spores could be picked up by gear and immediately upon exiting took samples and placed them into protective media designed to preserve GD. They proved that gear could get GD as far as a cave entrance...where it likely existed in the first place. Hardly a real test under real conditions.


wyandottercaver,

To be fair, this misrepresents the work of NYDEC's Joe Okoniewski, et al. This was not a set-up, and the findings were not a result of an intent to just go pick up spores on gear. It was actually an afterthought of the researchers to check the rinse water after gear was cleaned upon returning to their lab. No, it was not published, but was presented orally to the WNS Symposium in Pittsburgh in 2010. Here's the full abstract from the proceedings, which are on the USFWS website.

Detection of the Conidia of Geomyces destructans in Northeast Hibernacula, at Maternal Colonies, and on Gear – Some Findings Based on Microscopy and Culture
JOSEPH C. OKONIEWSKI 1, JOHN HAINES 2, ALAN C. HICKS 1, KATE E. LANGWIG 1, RYAN I. VON LINDEN 1, AND CHRISTOPHER A. DOBONY 3
1 New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Albany, NY
2 New York State Department of Health, Albany, NY
3 Department of Defense, Fort Drum Military Installation, Fort Drum, NY

Geomyces destructans, the apparent causal agent of white-nose syndrome (WNS), produces enormous numbers of conidia (asexual spores). These conidia can be readily identified with light microscopy and can be cultured on standard media. In the last year we have employed these techniques to detect the presence of G. destructans in various investigations. Using a portable Burkhard sampler which deposits airborne particles on two-sided tape mounted on a microscope slide, we collected air samples (0.09 m 3/sample) from WNS-affected hibernacula in New York and Vermont. To date, examination of 36 samples from six hibernacula collected during the hibernation season has yielded a total of seven positive results from three sites. Five of the positive samples captured only one or two conidia. The highest conidia count (109) was collected less than 0.5 m below a small group of WNS affected bats. All of the 33 samples collected at six hibernacula outside of the hibernation season have been negative. Microscopic searches of swab samples collected from surfaces in hibernacula on which airborne conidia are likely to be deposited have, so far, yielded mostly negative results. In contrast, swab samples from drill-holes at one mine (where direct contact with bats is likely) were mostly positive. Attempts to culture G. destructans from swabs of the same surfaces failed due to rapid growth of other fungi. Conidia can frequently be found on decomposed bat remains in WNS-affected hibernacula, although numbers decline rapidly with time and the growth and activity of other organisms. Findings at necropsy suggest that a lot of conidia are swallowed in grooming during arousal bouts. These conidia can comprise the bulk of material in fecal pellets produced during hibernation. Conidia from the colon have been found to be viable on culture. The fate and importance of this concentration of conidia in fecal material awaits investigation. We have not yet found G. destructans growing on anything in hibernacula except live or freshly dead bats. At maternal colonies, swabbing of bats and direct media inoculations collectively yielded positive results in both May (3/15) and August (3/17) at Fort Drum, and in one of four bats at a colony in the upper Hudson Valley in June. Sampling at a colony near Lake Champlain (July, n=21) and another in the Finger Lakes (August, n=11) was negative. Conidia of G. destructans were observed in swab or rinse samples of apparel and a gear used in WNS-affected hibernacula. [oral]
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Re: Intentional WNS spread?

Postby Myrna Attaway » Feb 9, 2013 6:16 pm

As I read the inital post I interpreded his question to be if any one had intentionaly went caving with contaminated gear. I was thinking I had read it wrong after Peter's post. At any rate it looks like a half assed, off the cuff answer was a good way to get some great information. Thanks Peter.
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Re: Intentional WNS spread?

Postby John Lovaas » Feb 9, 2013 7:57 pm

@GroundquestMSA- the only people who should be offended by the term 'dumb white trash' should be the dumb white trash who serially knock bats off of cave walls, collect them and pack them into plastic bags, or string a clothsline in a cave and hang a bunch of bats on it. Three examples I'm aware of.

Touching a bat once in your life doesn't qualify as 'handling'. I deliberately grouped 'recreational/clueless' and scientific handlers together- both are capable of handling lots of bats.
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Re: Intentional WNS spread?

Postby wyandottecaver » Feb 11, 2013 3:05 pm

Peter,
we may be referring to two different cases. The "pack strap" study I recall had the sampling by swab at the cave and I don't remember a mention of rinsewater. It was early on in the WNS research, so I may have grown fuzzy...pun intended.
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