Far Flung Fungus Found

Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a middle school student and Save Lucy volunteer. Rachael’s interest in bats was sparked by the big brown bats that used the outside of her former home for a winter roost. Her family cheerfully hosted the wild colony for years.

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a good week! I hope you enjoyed your Halloween and got lots and lots of candy! The bats all enjoyed their Halloween bugs.

A photograph of bat researcher Joe Hoyt swabbing bats in a cave in China
Our friend, researcher Joe Hoyt, swabs bats for Pd in China. Photo courtesy USC.

I read an interesting article about WNS. Some of you might have already seen this news, but for those of you who didn’t, scientists have found the fungus that causes WNS in Chinese bats. Until now, scientists had only found the fungus in Europe and North America. As you all know, it is killing bats here in North America. Bats in Europe seem to have developed some sort of immunity to it. The fungus, P. destructans, doesn’t seem to be killing Chinese bats either. The scientists think that the fungus has been in Europe and China for tens of thousands of years. During that time, bats that live in those areas have developed some immunity to the fungus. The problem is that our bats don’t have tens of thousands of years to develop immunity. Hopefully the researchers will be able to figure out how the foreign bats are immune to the fungus. If they can figure that out, maybe, just maybe, they’ll be able to find a cure. I hope they do because our bats need help.

You can read all about it here.

 

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