Bat Battle

As white-nose syndrome devastates bat populations across North America, biologists are fighting to find tactics to save them.

- Brian Banks

“We sort of knew it was coming, but it doesn’t prepare you for the horror show of an affected cave,” says Craig Willis, biology professor and bat researcher at the University of Winnipeg. The “it” is white-nose syndrome, a disease caused by a fungus that grows on the nose, wings and other exposed skin of hibernating bats. The disease dehydrates the creatures, disrupts their torpor and has up to a 99 per cent mortality rate. This past spring, researchers from Willis’s lab recorded its first appearance in a little brown bat hibernaculum in Manitoba. “It was a typical mass mortality event,” he says, “with bats flying out in the snow and carcasses all clustered near the entrance.”