Heaters might stave off doom for bats: researchers

Michael Hill, Associated Press Yahoo News 5 Mar 09;

ALBANY, N.Y. – Bats afflicted with a mysterious and deadly disorder might be able to make it through winter with the help of heated boxes placed in hibernation caves, a pair of researchers say.

The biologists stress that the boxes being tested this winter are not intended to cure "white-nose syndrome," which has killed upward of a half million bats in three winters from New England to West Virginia.

But, in an article published online Thursday in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, they suggest the little heated havens could help stricken bats preserve enough precious energy to survive hibernation season.

White-nose syndrome, named for the white smudges of fungus on the noses and wings of hibernating bats, has alarmed scientists by spreading from a few caves in upstate New York two winters ago to at least 55 caves in seven states. White-nose bats appear to starve to death, running through their winter fat stores before spring.

Researchers worry about the fate of bats, which play an important role in controlling the populations of insects that can damage wheat, apples and dozens of other crops.

As scientists try to definitively establish whether the fungus is the cause, as suspected, or a symptom of white nose, researchers Justin Boyles and Craig Willis considered a way to manage it based on computer modeling of the energy expended by bats.

Based on the theory that afflicted bats rouse from hibernation more often than normal bats and thus burn more fat to stay warm, they suggest that small bat boxes with battery-powered heating coils could create warm refuges for the creatures.

"It would be sort of a stopgap measure," said Willis, a biology professor at the University of Winnipeg. Boyles, the lead author, is a graduate student in biology at Indiana State University.

Hibernating bats will seek warmer parts of caves during bouts of activity. The pair will test whether healthy bats will use heated boxes instead during a test in the coming months in a cave in Manitoba, Canada. The pilot study is funded with a $28,000 grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

There are potential problems with a mass deployment of heaters that go beyond the logistics and cost. Willis concedes that such an intervention could backfire if white nose is spread from bat to bat in the summer, since it would prolong the survival of infected bats.

But David Blehert, who identified the white-nose fungus as head of microbiology at the U.S. Geological Survey's Wildlife Health Center, said summer spreading is not a concern with this fungus, which needs cold to thrive. Blehert and other researchers said that given the magnitude of the problem, it makes sense to at least test the hypothesis.

"It's not a magic silver bullet," Blehert said, "but it might provide some percentage of bats with a fighting chance to survive hibernation."

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On the Net:

White Nose Syndrome Page: http://www.caves.org/WNS/WNS%20Info.htm

Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment: http://www.frontiersinecology.org

"Bat Box" Heaters Could Save Animals' Lives
Ker Than, National Geographic News 5 Mar 09;

Solar-powered heaters could help save the lives of bats infected with a deadly fungus, a new computer model suggests.

The fungus, a member of the Geomyces genus, has caused deaths upward of 80 percent in several bat populations in the northeastern United States and Canada. Scientists haven't figured out a way to stop it from spreading.

One hypothesis is that the fungus rouses bats from their winter hibernation more often than usual.

Like many mammals, the body temperatures of bats drop dramatically during hibernation. When roused, the animals have to use precious calories to raise their body temperatures again.

"We think they're starving to death, and there's a couple ways that can happen," said lead study author Justin Boyles of Indiana State University.

"Arousing more often is one of those ways."

To test this idea, Boyles and his colleagues simulated the hibernation patterns of about a thousand little brown bats.

The model showed that more frequent rousing could indeed cause the kinds of high bat mortality rates being observed in the wild.

The research also suggests that many affected bats could survive the winter if small areas in their caves were warmed with artificial heaters. By raising the surrounding air temperature, the bats would need to burn fewer calories to warm back up.

When bats rouse from hibernation, they naturally fly to warm spots. When the animals are ready to hibernate again, they leave those regions.

Craig Willis of the University of Winnipeg, who worked with Boyle on the study, built a prototype "bat box" that can serve as a warm haven for roused bats.

"They're basically like bird houses. We're insulating them really well and putting heaters in them," Boyles said.

The bat boxes run on car batteries charged via solar panels. The team plans to test their contraption soon in a small bat population in Canada.

Findings detailed in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.