Do Cavers spread White Nose Syndrome?

[eyecave]

In the end what we humans do will have little or no effect.

The earth will win. Bats will survive or not as will we.

We all are only here temporarily.

these statements are all true........what can we do to assist, that is what i ask.........what are you asking?

[eyecave]

eyecave,

just cross posted in another thread. The short version is that we put thermal imaging cameras under about 10,000 indiana bats for a whole winter while we ran lighted tours of mostly chatty school kids under them about twice a week. Not only did we not find piles of dead bats from those disturbances, we could prove that as a whole, bat arousal (we could measure .5 deg body temp changes) was not even tied to tours at all.

People equate caving with disturbance and disturbance with reduced ultimate survival. I would challenge you that those are very shaky assumptions.

what about my point?...........do you remember it?..........i was suggestiing that not disturbing sickened bats during their first exposure to wns on the rare chance that that bat might be the one that has the gene that allows him to survive?..............why do you over and over ignore that one simple question..........i am talking about a very short period of time during which cavers voluntarily restrict all caving in areas of wns infestation.................ANSWER THAT POINT ...please........

[Mudduck]

I had a brief question and given the activity of this topic i thought id just ask here rather than start another topic. Has there been a regional, state or otherwise sampling of soil in various caves not infected IAW the current WNS map??

[BrianC]

eyecave,

just cross posted in another thread. The short version is that we put thermal imaging cameras under about 10,000 indiana bats for a whole winter while we ran lighted tours of mostly chatty school kids under them about twice a week. Not only did we not find piles of dead bats from those disturbances, we could prove that as a whole, bat arousal (we could measure .5 deg body temp changes) was not even tied to tours at all.

People equate caving with disturbance and disturbance with reduced ultimate survival. I would challenge you that those are very shaky assumptions.

what about my point?...........do you remember it?..........i was suggestiing that not disturbing sickened bats during their first exposure to wns on the rare chance that that bat might be the one that has the gene that allows him to survive?..............why do you over and over ignore that one simple question..........i am talking about a very short period of time during which cavers voluntarily restrict all caving in areas of wns infestation.................ANSWER THAT POINT ...please........

eyecave, I would tend to agree that restricting caving, for a period of time, could have possibly helped us understand any bats resistance to WNS, The problem, as you can see, is that the governing bodies(cave closers) take
entirely to much ground when issuing restrictions. They have lost 100% of the confidence that cavers might have had for them. The fight here, is not really that bats have WNS, but rather that facts have not been properly considered when issuing responsibility of how bats contract WNS. Not one single caver want's to harm bats in any way. Cavers want to do the right thing in all cases. Cavers have been branded as criminals by the scientific community, and our Government for spreading WNS. The only way to combat this ridiculousness now, is to require facts be used in any situation pertaining to WNS Yes,some bats will survive and should bring immunity to their fold, at some point. If they don't, we couldn't stop WNS anyway. We certainly gave the USFWS the upper hand initially by realizing staying out of caves might have some impact on spreading WNS, then the USFWS, USGS, and others took this much to far and criminalized cavers for spreading WNS. Every single article spread the lies through every front page newspaper and environmental magazine suggesting that cavers were spreading WNS. So now we must fight cave closures in any and all ways using real facts. Cavers are a small group, misunderstood by the civilized world, and therefore is the reason we have been the scapegoat. This has gone on to long, and cavers realize if we don't fight the nonsense, we could loose caves forever. Facts do show cavers don't spread White Nose Syndrome, spores yes, but facts show that without a WNS infected bat, the spores do nothing.. FACTS, FACTS, FACTS...

[wyandottecaver]

eyecave, if a bat has WNS its gonna die. Period. Out of millions infected, we haven't found one case where a bat contracted WNS and lived. Thus protecting this hypothetical bat with hypothetical resistance is so far, a fools errand. Even if 1 bat in 10,000 is resistant (no evidence of that) do the survivors constitute a big enough gene pool to survive everything else other than WNS that affects bats, including inbreeding? probably not.

What we do know, and can prove, is that if a bat is infected with WNS and does survive its first winter,(possibly because it was infected late in the winter) it lives long enough to emerge in spring and travel widely and infect many many other bats.

Based on that your logic is backwards. We should HOPE those sick bats don't survive. (I have advocated strongly we should HELP them not survive. Every sick bat that emerges in spring is a WNS cruise missle aimed at the remaining gene pool.

[tncaver]

What we do know, and can prove, is that if a bat is infected with WNS and does survive its first winter,(possibly because it was infected late in the winter) it lives long enough to emerge in spring and travel widely and infect many many other bats.

Based on that your logic is backwards. We should HOPE those sick bats don't survive. (I have advocated strongly we should HELP them not survive. Every sick bat that emerges in spring is a WNS cruise missle aimed at the remaining gene pool.

wyandotecaver, it seems that Wisconsin has capitalized on your theory. I hope we will hear the facts as soon as they are determined. If nothing else,
it will be interesting.

[wyandottecaver]

Muddock,

If I understand your question...

yes, soil samples from states east of the mississippi were collected from both infected and non infected areas. No sites outside the infected areas had GD. However, the sample size had to be reduced due to funding and even in caves with WNS, culturing anything from the samples was very hard. GD is not an easy thing to grow in the first place (it requires very precise conditions) and its easily overwhelmed by "normal" stuff.


TNcaver
Actually WI is just excluding bats from various places. I'm sure they can and will move. In some cases they put them in refrigerators for "storage" till spring. In any event, even if all excluded and refrigerated bats die...killing healthy bats before WNS even reaches the state isn't exactly what I was advocating.

[BrianC]

eyecave, if a bat has WNS its gonna die. Period. Out of millions infected, we haven't found one case where a bat contracted WNS and lived.

Actually wyandottecaver, a couple weeks ago I read an instance where someone collected WNS infected bats and is rehabilitating them to a much better state. Depending on wing damage, they may never survive in the wild.

[tncaver]

GD is not an easy thing to grow in the first place (it requires very precise conditions) and its easily overwhelmed by "normal" stuff.

When will our government figure this out?

TNcaver
Actually WI is just excluding bats from various places. I'm sure they can and will move. In some cases they put them in refrigerators for "storage" till spring. In any event, even if all excluded and refrigerated bats die...killing healthy bats before WNS even reaches the state isn't exactly what I was advocating.

Well, I thought killing bats that are infected with WNS was what you were advocating a while back. In all fairness, it may have been the best solution if done soon enough before the area of infection grew. But of course there are those pesky NEPA rules and regulations. Plus, who wants to kill bats? In the past it has only been rednecks.

[self-deleted_user]

eyecave, if a bat has WNS its gonna die. Period. Out of millions infected, we haven't found one case where a bat contracted WNS and lived. Thus protecting this hypothetical bat with hypothetical resistance is so far, a fools errand.

And stupid and ironic...if it's resistant to WNS then by definition it won't get WNS.

[wyandottecaver]

Brian,

The one example I have seen of that (On the Bat Conservation and Management website) was using apple vinegar. They nursed the bat back to "health" then RELEASED IT.
1) They never did anything beyond a visual inspection to determine if GD was still present or not...and we don't know if that bat eventually died or not after release.
2) In most States its now ILLEGAL (due to WNS) for a rehabilitator to do anything more than "tag n bag"(kill) a bat and send to a lab.

TN,
yes I did (and do) advocate killing all bats in infected colonies. Killing healthy bats where WNS isnt even in the State yet is a bit extreme even for me. Though killing as many bats as we could east of the mississippi would probably be the best defense for states west of the mississippi

Besides, killing bats is cheap and probably too effective. Research, exotic remedies, study groups, extra USFWS WNS "specialists", university grants....thats where the money is.

[tncaver]

Our world is so cruel.

[PYoungbaer]

Mudduck,

Wyandottecaver is correct in his reporting of the cave sediment sampling. This was the very first project funded by the NSS's Rapid Response Fund back in early 2008. We funded and coordinated the sampling from all states east of the Mississippi, plus those bordering on the West. Later, the USGS lab in Madison, Wisconsin, received funding from the USFWS for the analysis. Unfortunately, they encountered the technical problems Wyandottecaver alluded to. The work was just published last month:

http://www.mycologia.org/cgi/content/abstract/10-262v1

Regarding the rehabbing of bats, Brian is actually correct here in that New Jersey is coordinating a rehab/release project at WNS sites in NJ, funded by one of the USFWS grants awarded earlier this fall. Here's the story:

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/11/nj_biologists_tag_cured_bats_t.html

[eyecave]

eyecave, if a bat has WNS its gonna die. Period. Out of millions infected, we haven't found one case where a bat contracted WNS and lived. Thus protecting this hypothetical bat with hypothetical resistance is so far, a fools errand.

And stupid and ironic...if it's resistant to WNS then by definition it won't get WNS.

eyecave, if a bat has WNS its gonna die. Period. Out of millions infected, we haven't found one case where a bat contracted WNS and lived. Thus protecting this hypothetical bat with hypothetical resistance is so far, a fools errand.

And stupid and ironic...if it's resistant to WNS then by definition it won't get WNS.

eyecave, if a bat has WNS its gonna die. Period. Out of millions infected, we haven't found one case where a bat contracted WNS and lived. Thus protecting this hypothetical bat with hypothetical resistance is so far, a fools errand.

And stupid and ironic...if it's resistant to WNS then by definition it won't get WNS.

WHAT ABOUT THE ONES IN EUROPE THAT AREN'T KILLED BY WNS?.......YOU DO REALIZE THAT VERY VERY SMALL NUMBERS OF INDIVIDUALS SURVIVE MASS EXTERMINATION EVENTS.....YOU DO REALIZE THAT SIMPLE GENETIC FACT.....DON'T YOU?[I have advocated strongly we should HELP them not survive. Every sick bat that emerges in spring is a WNS cruise missle aimed at the remaining gene pool.

this is an incredibly obvious freudian slip that explains your continually discouraging the idea that disturbing hibernating bats was harmful.......you saw very little problems with it at all..........though you did admit that one common species was very much effected by disturbances.........

unfortunately it also indicates a level of ignorance concerning the concepts of survival of the fittest and the importance of their being availalble to breed to a level that represents a sustained danger to these rare genetic individuals...............

[self-deleted_user]

Erm, well first of all show me bats in Europe that have WNS and survive. Sure, g.d. that's all around. g.d =/= WNS

And anyway, the way you choose your words and the way you refuse to write in any semblance of proper English and then get upset at us when we can't understand what you're saying...yeah. There is a word for what you're doing. Trolling.

/me labels eyecave a troll, foes him, and moves on with her life