The
Silver-Haired Bat (Lasionycteris noctivagans) is a migratory tree bat that is known to occasionally and opportunistically utilize cave entrances, especially during particularly cold weather. It does not hibernate in caves, nor in clusters, nor is there any reason to believe that it is affected by White-Nose Syndrome.
Holly Niederriter of the Delaware Division of Fish and Wildlife reported at the 2014 Northeast Bat Working Group that they had swabbed a LANO found near the entrance of -- if I recall correctly -- one of their many abandoned military bunkers, and it tested positive for
P.d.Given that
P.d. is likely to be found on anything that remains in or visits a cave, should the USFWS add
Neotoma magister,
Procyon lotor, and
Homo sapiens to that list as well?
Of course, given that LANO is a long-distance migratory bat, its occasional cave use could theoretically transmit
P.d. spores across its range, perhaps as far as
many 100's of km to 1500km.
However, given the novelty of this discovery, the audience at NEBWG generally gasped and/or laughed, as LANO is a tree bat, and most bat researchers will go their whole lives without ever encountering one in a cave.
On a related note, Mark Ford of Virginia Tech mentioned that tree-roosting
Northern Long-Eared Myotis (Myotis septentrionalis) and their in-tree roosts were swabbed, and researchers found cave fungi in the roosting tree holes, and wood decomposing fungus on the bats. Perhaps bats also serve to spread these fungi from tree to tree.