Disease alters macroecological patterns of North American bats

Abstract

AimWe investigated the effects of disease on the local abundances and distributions of species at continental scales by examining the impacts of white-nose syndrome, an infectious disease of hibernating bats, which has recently emerged in North America.

Host persistence or extinction from emerging infectious disease: insights from white-nose syndrome in endemic and invading regions

“…These predictions are consistent with patterns of initial declines of these species reported previously [17,18]. Specifically, My.…”

“…Disease can drive population cycles, cause extinctions that re-structure communities, and create continental-scale differences in abundance [17,37,38]. WNS has had devastating effects on bat populations across eastern and midwestern North America, with dozens of populations being extirpated and several species predicted to be driven extinct [16 -18].…”

“…Specifically, My. septentrionalis populations have been extirpated from most sites where WNS has been present for 3 or more years [17,18] whereas, My. lucifugus and P. subflavus populations have declined more than 90%, but have stabilized at much smaller sizes in some colonies [18].…”

“…White-nose syndrome (WNS), a recently emerged disease of hibernating bats, was first detected in North America in 2006 [15] and has caused precipitous declines in temperate bat populations across eastern and midwestern North America [16][17][18]. The pathogen that causes WNS, Pseudogymnoascus destructans, is a cold growing fungus that infects bats' skin during their hibernation period [19][20][21], and can persist in the environment for long periods of time in the absence of bats [22,23].…”

Genomic characterization of a novel poxvirus from a flying fox: evidence for a new genus?

“…Perhaps it is a very acute clinical disease that resolves rapidly and does not cause the host any systemic illness, or alternatively, there may have been some immunosuppression or immunomodulation in this particular individual, allowing a virus normally carried subclinically, a now well-documented situation in bat species (Rodhain, 2015), to be expressed as a clinical disease entity. Since bats live in very large colonies, agents that infect them may be restricted to low virulence (also perhaps chronic or persistent infections), rather than virulent acute infections which may eradicate bat colonies and the pathogen with them, such as in the current situation with the fungal disease, White nose syndrome, in North America (Frick et al, 2015). The other possibility is that only flying foxes that have been captured following misadventure or illness and sent to wildlife care facilities are examined, leading to a very small sample size of the overall population, and subsequent misrepresentation of a disease of low prevalence.…”