Bats

To keep you up to date about what is happening in our neighborhood, yesterday I received the following email from Bat Conservation International.

Dear supporters,

A research team led by the University of Winnipeg in Canada recently confirmed that the Geomyces destructans fungus that causes White-nose Syndrome (WNS) in North America originated in Europe, where it is still found but does not cause mass deaths of bats. This suggests that European bats may have faced WNS sometime in the past and the bats that survived evolved to have immunological or behavioral resistance to the disease. This research also demonstrates that the WNS fungus was almost certainly carried, inadvertently, by humans from an infected European cave to North America. Since it was first reported on the muzzles of little brown bats in New York’s Howes Cave, WNS has killed more than 5.7 million bats, according to federal biologists.

To recap, white-nose syndrome came from Europe where current bat populations are the survivors of WNS. I suppose pretty soon we should hear when in geological time the epidemic hit the European bat population and what effect the disease had on insect populations, food production, etc. Can't wait to see how fast science can fill in the gaps in this tragic story. In the mean time, we better stay in our own and out of bat caves for a while. 

Also, for those of you who are keeping score, the two lovely single family homes on the shed in our backyard are still not occupied, despite the fact that the shed faces south. Since we occasionally see one or more black rat snakes in or around the shed, I wonder if this could explain why both houses have been empty for 3 or 4 years now. Particularly because I just found out that black rat snakes have been photographed to eat bats.