White-Nose Syndrome
New England bats are in very bad danger right now because of the white-nose syndrome. The white-nose syndrome is a syndrome that turns a bat's nose a white fuzzy color. This is a fungus and it is deadly to the bat population. This syndrome occurs when the bat is hibernating in the winter, and the bat's core temperature goes above a few degrees of the temperature of the cave they hibernate in. This fungus is attacking 6 of the different species of bats in New England including the rare Indiana bat and the common brown bat. It occurs to the bats that hibernate deep in caves where it is very dark, damp, and cold. On average, Caves that are struck by this syndrome lose 80 – 100% of the bat population.
"The bat community is alarmed," says Marianne Moore of Boston University, who studies bat immunology. The bat population is dropping fast and the scientists don't know what to do. Identifying the fungus wasn't easy because they didn't have the right conditions for the fungus to live in. Finally, after many tries they found the right combination of temperature and living conditions. The bats that are affected have a heart beat of 4 beats per minutes and are very cold inside.
This fungus doesn't affect humans because our noses are too warm and move too much that the fungus can't live. Human noses breath air into and out of the body to keep people alive. If our noses didn't move and were extremely cold then maybe we could catch this fungus. The question is will this fungus go away or will the bat population die off?
By: M.B.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/38207/title/Bat_syndromes_telltale_white_nose-mold_new_to_science
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/access/id/38206/name/sm_singlebat.jpg
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