Ahead of the game
A strange white fungus is killing off cave bats on the east coast of the U.S., and it's slowly moving north.
University of New Brunswick researchers are staying ahead of the game by assessing the province's bat populations before the fungus hits home.
Bats have fascinated people for ages as creatures of the night, but they're also essential creatures in the food chain that love munching on bugs. Without bats, insect populations can rise drastically - and in the U.S., they're dropping by the hundreds of thousands.
Karen Vanderwolf, a UNB graduate student, has taken the project under her wing for her master's thesis. She's working with professors at UNB and the New Brunswick Museum to assess bat populations and caves before the fungus arrives in the province.
The fungus has been recorded in eight U.S. states, and has spread as far north as New Hampshire. The generic status of the fungus has been determined, but its full identity remains unknown.
It causes a fuzzy white growth around bats' noses and wings, and infected bats often wake up undernourished during hibernation. The underfed bats scour for food months before they otherwise would, often perishing in the process.
"We're swabbing the local bats and then culturing the swabs to find out what kind of fungal species live on the bats naturally," explains Vanderwolf.
"We're trying to learn about the environment that's there, before the fungus comes and changes things - but we also want to find out if it was there before and not causing trouble."
Underground research
Field work for her master's project is more than just getting outdoors: Vanderwolf is literally belly-crawling many of New Brunswick's 25 or so caves with her supervisors to provide a first-ever accurate estimate of the province's bat population.
She's being co-supervised by UNB Fredericton professor Graham Forbes and research curator Donald McAlpine of the New Brunswick Museum in Saint John, the province's top bat specialists.
The team is crawling through all sorts of narrow, low and muddy passages to take baseline measurements of bat populations and collect fungal samples.
"We go into the caves and count the bats, either one by one or by taking photographs to analyze later on," says McAlpine. "We do multiple counts, too, so we can have some idea as to how accurate these counts are as well."
A significant amount of care is taken so as to not disturb the bats' habitats.
"There's concern about transmitting the fungus from one cave to another, so we're following a very careful protocol in terms of washing down out own clothing, climbing gear and boots and things like that between caves," says McAlpine.
By taking these counts, the researchers hope to know the numbers of bats and the fungal composition of caves for comparison once the fungus spreads to New Brunswick.
Having prior measurements to compare after the fungus hits the province could lead to more information about its mysterious nature - and maybe even lead to its identification or prevention.
This will also assist wildlife managers in the region who are concerned about conserving bats and maintaining their populations.
A wealth of resources
While Vanderwolf studies at UNB Fredericton, she's currently doing research in Saint John, where she has ample access to a number of helpful facilities at the New Brunswick Museum and UNB's Saint John campus.
The shared research facilities - and the expertise behind them - give Vanderwolf an edge in her project.
While being supervised by the province's leading bat researchers, she also has access to experts in mycology - the study of fungus - in Saint John to help her culture and identify her fungus samples.
UNB Saint John professor John Johnson runs a mycology lab where Vanderwolf has access to an incubator for use in her project. Johnson is also the acting assistant vice-president and acting registrar for UNB's Saint John campus. She's also working with retired University of Toronto professor David Malloch, a world-renowned mycologist now working out of the New Brunswick Museum.
These researchers will help Vanderwolf determine what fungi are already in the cave, and, potentially, if the white nose fungus is already here.
Through UNB's campuses, the graduate student has access to world-class expertise within arms reach.
"Individually, we can't do it all, but together we can bring in different expertise," says Forbes, her co-supervisor. "It's great. We've lucked out."
