european bats...forced immigration....

[wyandottecaver]

never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by......


a consensus position formed: greenhouse gases were deeply involved in most climate changes, and human emissions were bringing serious global warming.......another way of my responding to your post is simply to point out that a lot of learned men making statements that were true.......were very wrong and stood in the way of early action on global warming from being considered seriously....

Nope. The reason that global warming IS STILL hotly debated is that the models used (for whichever theory, take your pick) are invariably biased or based on unprovable assumptions. I think many people recognize global warming is happening, its the hows and whys and what impact any particular variable has that is at issue. What those learned men did was criticize sloppy work which forced people to look harder at their assumptions...as for action, that has nothing at all to do with science as we have seen, but with money and politics.

........pater......i am totally educated enough to understand the way genetics works and also how it doesn't work....

Based on your posts we can agree to disagree

i just am not sure how a very significant increase in the insects bats feed on will effect us......i am sure that bats will survive as a species in this part of the world no matter how bungling are the actions of the humans living during that period of time

it will probably affect us the same way an increase in the number of things Passenger Pigeons fed on did, you know, the American bird that was once so numerous a single flock could block the sun for an afternoon and snap the branches of oak trees when they landed.......Go find one (a way we were affected by their uneaten food sources that is, Passenger Pigeons are extinct). Bats aren't a species BTW.

.....i can also see that the bat scientific community is just as open to my suggestion of this topic as i knew they would be......

I certainly agree that just because someone calls themselves a scientist, biologist, or expert doesn't mean they can actually think, or even in some cases understand what they manage...However, the bat scientific community as a whole does posses a pretty good background for evaluating suggestions. BTW, being open to a suggestion is not the same thing as agreeing to a course of action that is based on several assumptions we already know from direct experiance to be false.

semantic discussions of origin are just that....accomplishing nothing....it came from europe....VBE's don't get wns!......that is a good thing.....did't know that....my IQ says its the non suppression of the immune system that does that......another IQ thing.......bats feed on flying insects......the further you go out to sea during the night the fewer flying insects you will find......bats are flying at night to feed........you follow the logic?.....i smell semantics in your other statements of things that could be true....

IQ is based on intelligence, knowing VBE don't suppress their immune system is simply data you didnt have before and has nothing to do with IQ. You also conveniently missed Peter's mention of fur musk...which is new to me and possibly a very big factor in preventing GD from getting a hold in the first place. As for your flying insects analogy...your kung fu must be greater than mine there...

the example where native bats were introduced into an area where native species had already been ALL killed by wns and then saying that because the wns killed ALL the newly introduced native bats and therefore all NON NATIVE BATS would suffer the same results is idiotic on its face.....flash....bats exist in the world who are all already not killed by wns infection.......

Flash, remember your educated about Genetics right? Different gentics is different genetics whether they are different native gentics or non native. The bats in Europe are no more genetically diverse from infected little browns than infected pipistrelles, grays and big browns that are all native.
No one, anywhere, has shown a single bat that isn't killed by WNS infection yet. They have shown bats that survive longer than others and shown bats that apparently don't get it. What is idiotic on it's face is assuming that just because a bat in Europe can survive..for some period...with WNS in Europe, that same bat can survive in a totally new environment under totally different conditions and exposed to totally different ecology. Maybe it can, but history shows it as being very uncertain.

removing 50 individuals of VBE's is a justifiable risk to take under those conditions at that time porter.......i am not surprised that authorities could not see the value in risking .00125 percent of the population in an attempt to protect against a worst case scenario .....

You have mentioned Peter's name 3 times and didn't get it right any of them...you need to take more time in examining your typing and your assumptions. Everyone recognized the value, they also recognized stupidity. We can agree that saving money for the future has value, hiding paper money in a wood stove during winter probably isn't the best way to do that. The VBE experiment was essentially the same thing.

i would also suggest that the actions taken could have been predictably fatal to the bats due to a very poor experiment design as it sounds like it was...do you think it would have been better for the "authorities" to have suggested a better experimental design and less opposition to the idea itself..maybe a little more productive?......

The opposition was not as much about the idea (there was some) but about the design and who was doing it. The fact that they didn't suggest a better design and wouldn't listen to those that could was the reason for much of the opposition in the first place.

the actions of introducing non native bats would increase biological diversity....i acknowlege the potential dangers except your insistence that it would lower genetic diversity
...

That is a patently poor assumption since in MOST cases of introducing non natives the exact opposite can be expected to happen and HAS happened over and over throughout the world.

...apparently you can't make the intellectual leap in seeing that a seperate population of european bats successfully establishing a colony in this area and co-existing with native bats would increase genetic variability IN THE AREA'S BAT POPULATION due simply to the fact they survive and are there....a good doctoral study here would be testing this co-existing out.......if the seperate colonies interbreed that would significantly increase genetic diversity also....but they wouldn't have to interbreed immediately for this to occur.........it might happen 200 years later.

Intellectual leaps seems to be a specialty of yours. Biology, history, and good old fashioned observation have already shown that non natives surviving, co-existing, and interbreeding are all indeed theoretically possible, and all are also extremely unlikely, and all of them happening is so unlikely as to verge on functionally impossible.

my suggestion is directed at a complete or near complete extinction event which is what i thought we were facing.....you make it sound like that is already known to not be likely and bats are surviving well enough to already be able to re-establish decimated colonies, something i find a little unbelievable............

I think Peter was saying that we aren't to the point of saying this will be a extinction event or not. Increases in individual colonies are encouraging but don't really show whether the population as a whole is increasing or just relocating among caves. In the case of Big Browns, an increasing population may in fact be true.

.i also am positive that north american cavers or bats or other hibernating birds will spread the wns fungi to mexico and south america......if wns has appeared and thrived to any degree anywhere in the world in places near the equator or tropical or hot environment, then south american bats are at risk.......also you or no one can assume that a strain of wns that is climate resistent can't develop at some point...........

GD has already been shown to not grow in relatively mild summer conditions. While spores can survive higher temps, GD must be able to grow to cause WNS in bats and that appears impossible at sub tropical temperatures. As you say, it could mutate, but then it would have to overcome non hibernting bats with active immune systems which your IQ has already deemed makes them safe.

[eyecave]

i also am positive that north american cavers or bats or other hibernating birds will spread the wns fungi to mexico and south america

Do you mean migratory? I didn't think that any species of bird truly hibernates, and certainly not those that share a habitat with bats. I could be wrong.

yes..i meant to say migratory.... ..

[eyecave]

[eyecave]

Peter,

As others said excellent post. After my first post It was obvious that I might as well sit back and enjoy the show :)

Can you reference the USGS study showing GD can survive without a host? The only one I am aware of was done less than a year after the local bats perished and made no allowance for remaining guano deposits, carcasses, etc and only showed DNA of GD present, not that it was completing any sort of lifecycle or even that there were viable spores?

Also, is there a follow on or updated study from Fort Drum? The initial report I read did not show (I think) a unique individual surviving and breeding through 2 complete winters of WNS, only that the Colony as a whole did so...(and the Colony as a whole still declined in numbers by like 50% over the time studied) it should also be noted that the Ft Drum colony is in essentially ideal conditions for bat survival and probably represents a best case scenario.

enjoy the show.......i made a reference earlier that i would be satisfied if individual bats could be show to develop wns and survive multiple hibernations and therefore likely breed successfully.....though the latter could be researched also.....wonder if it will drop by another 50% or if it will accelerate or increase this year.......we will see won't we?....

GD can survive probably for years in many different situations without a host............

[eyecave]

wyandottecaver.......

you said "it will probably affect us the same way an increase in the number of things Passenger Pigeons fed on did, you know, the American bird that was once so numerous a single flock could block the sun for an afternoon and snap the branches of oak trees when they landed.......Go find one (a way we were affected by their uneaten food sources that is, Passenger Pigeons are extinct). Bats aren't a species BTW."

hey......how many types of birds were available to replace the passenger pigeons?...indeed,...how many types of pigeons sir?...how many types of bats are available to replace the ones we currently have?........a smaller number i bet......also hunted to extinction and diseased to extinction might cause a difference in the outcomes, like disease might cross over to another type whereas hunters might not want to eat buzzard or recognize the monetary value of killing sparrows with a shot costing a dollar..........as far as whether or not bats aren't a species!!........ please goggle bats species........

[PYoungbaer]

eyecave,

My apologies. I was unaware I had misspelled your Cave Chat moniker, but you are correct. Perhaps it's because I work in a clinic where we have a committee looking to expand our eyecare services, so the words looked right. It was totally inadvertent.

Re: the VBE experiment, I expect that after the failure, no one was anxious to mess with a federally-endangered species further. Plus, one of the major objections to begin with was that there has never been a successful breeding colony for insectivorous bats.

By the way, the USFWS' WNS National Plan has had a working group on captive breeding, but Jeremy Coleman reported to us at the Northeast Bat Working Group meeting in January that they have concluded that there will be no further work on this at this time. He said they assessed seven bat species, and ruled five out totally. Two remain possibilities, but there is no follow up work planned.

Re: bat species, bats are an Order (Chiroptera), not a species, with two sub-orders, Megachiroptera and Microchiroptera. There are over 1200 species worldwide, with some 45-47 in the U.S., 25 of which are classified as hibernators.

Re: the "replacement" discussion, I would again urge folks to look at the Kate Miller presentation I linked to in my prior post. We have further evidence for several years now from the summer acoustic monitoring surveys in New York. This past summer's showed only 9% were any Myotis species, while 65% were big browns. Similar results were reported from Vermont, where they have been studying summer maternity colonies. Alyssa Bennett, VFW, presented these images:

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

[eyecave]

what i envisioned when considering establishing a bat colony.....was taking a number of bats to a distant location where all conditions (boy is that a lot of variables) were suitable for colonization and releasing them after introducing them to their new home (no wonder there has never been a success).....wave upon wave of variables crashing on the mere idea....if you could rent the superdome and close it off completely and release the bats and flying food within it should and would work.......too expensive......any attempt at feeding the bats in any other way would obviously fail...a bat uninhabited island with lots of flying insects in just the right temperate zone or a large enclosed area the bats could fly around within.....anything else would fail.....these two ideas could also easily not work.....but the superdome idea would work for sure....

if native bats are already replacing the ones being affected by wns that is great!!.......makes nonnative replacement totally unnecessary.....unless wns mutates to a form effecting fatally currently surviving bats...........so...if this native bat replacement continues any other action by humans probably wouldn't be necessary.......if it doesn't and its a complete extinction event....that would change...also, it is possible that 20 years from now this subject could be passe and we see a mutation wiping out the replacement colonies.........

i can see why everything....except this bat order species thing......when people discuss things concerning this subject i think it more likely that they refer to whatever discussed more often using the word species incorrectly than order correctly.......i personally will continue to use the word species rather than order......science be damned.......

i feel better after talking to you peter..thanks....

[eyecave]

....

i do feel better after talking to you peter..thanks....

[Myrna Attaway]

Short version. You will not get any serious scientists to agree. Remember those who dont study history are bound to repeat it. There are multiple examples where the experts decidedit was a good idea to import a species and found they were wrong. There is almost always an unintended bad consequence. Shorter version. It aint gonna happen.

[eyecave]

ms attaway.....it may have already happened......thats how wns probably got here in the first place........

[caverdan]

How would you help the Chestnut trees? By repopulating with ones from Europe? I think your comparing apples with oranges here.

boy did you ever walk into that one...goggle "chestnut tree repopulation".......

starting 30 years after the blight they began to search for surviving chestnut trees and also imported blight resistance species......i wonder.....after the blight came in with the japanese trees did any other bad stuff come in with the other chestnut trees from other parts of the earth?....they have been actively interbreeding the different trees since.......i am proposing that we do that with bats........we already have the blight.......wake up people....stop being such parrots and think!......

For my next stupid question......is it possible to back cross breed a bat?

[Myrna Attaway]

I was refering to the introduction of a non native species. Sorry, my post got out of order and appeared to refer to something else.

Peter, do you know if any research has looked at the microbial (flora or is it fauna) fauna of the bats that seem risitant to WNS? Myrna's personal BS theory based on just your post is that there could be a bacteria in the gut that creates risistance.

[eyecave]

For my next stupid question......is it possible to back cross breed a bat?[/quote]

of course.......but; currently the science of cloning is not advanced enough to do that...my purpose in comparing chestnut blight to wns and the resulting history of the blight was to illustrate that actions similar to what i propose have already been necessary...

[Myrna Attaway]

But the hybrid chestnuts are sterile, arent they? I would imagine that hybrid bats would be mules too.

[caverdan]

For my next stupid question......is it possible to back cross breed a bat?

of course.......but; currently the science of cloning is not advanced enough to do that...my purpose in comparing chestnut blight to wns and the resulting history of the blight was to illustrate that actions similar to what i propose have already been necessary...

Now I'm really confused.......how did cloning get into this discussion? I'll take your answer to my question as a NO and back out of this thread for now.

True, I don't know a ton about the Chestnut tree ...... they don't grow around here at 6,200' (We have a very select group of plants that do) and I have yet to stock or sell them. I do know you can treat the cankers to save individual trees and they have been trying to come up with new varieties. I did put on some goggles and learned a little bit more about them. I thank you for that. But I still don't fully understand what your proposing? Nor do I really care at this point.....as long as I learned something.....I'll leave it at that.