With the aid from the U.S. Forest Service, Georgia State’s post-doctoral researcher Chris Cornelison said his efforts have come the furthest in North America to finding a cure for white-nose syndrome (WNS).
WNS, a disease causing white fungus to grow on the muzzle or other parts of bats, is responsible for the mortality rate of the animals in eastern North America, according to a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service fact-sheet.
“First documented in New York in the winter of 2006-2008, WNS has spread rapidly across the eastern and midwestern United States and eastern Canada, and evidence of the fungus that causes WNS has been detected as far south as Mississippi,” the fact-sheet states.
Cornelison said his research team has been the most successful demonstrating a WNS treatment option.
“There have been other groups that have investigated treatment options but they have not been able to demonstrate experimentally the success that we have,” he said. “In some cases the treatments have killed more bats than white-nose syndrome and if more successful they were about the same, so there was no real benefit.”
The research is also important because it can lead to positive publicity and financial benefits to treat the animals, according to Cornelison.
“While there is not a lot of financial benefits to treating bats, there are a lot of other things in our world that suffer from disease from fungi and molds and so we are continuing to investigate commercial options for this technology,” he said.
Cornelison said his work is important to not only preserve the species in North America but to also negate any economic problems that would arise if bats are to be placed on the U.S. Federal Endangered Species Act.
“The potential listing could have big financial consequences for North American industries including mineral extraction, forestry management and infrastructure development since they would need to avoid disturbing the listed species,” the report states.
Cornelison said he is currently in the midst of field trials after having conducted controlled experiments in labs.
“We started out slowly moving towards the real world scenario by bringing bats in, putting them in essentially a refrigerator as an artificial hibernaculum and have been treating them in that scenario. So, live bats infected naturally with the disease are treated in this refrigerator and we showed tremendous success at increasing survivorship,”he said.
This trial was vital after experimenting with the mold in proving Rhodococcus does not have negative effects on the bats.The experiment has now transitioned from lab testing to field testing in sites (two in Missouri and two in Kentucky), according to Cornelison.
“We don’t have any conclusive findings yet, but the reports from collaborators are that there are already a significant difference in the level of disease between treated and untreated showing out treatment is being successful in the field,” he said. “This is the last threshold before actually doing disease management and no longer experimental but actually providing this to resource managers to go into the field and to mitigate the disease.”
The bats will remain in hibernation for the treatment trial until spring. The trial will then lead to further evaluation of application methodologies in the summer and expansions of field sites in winter, according to Cornelison.
Aside from preserving a species, bats act as an economically direct value in agricultural practices as a natural and free insect control, according to Cornelison. Without the presence of the animals, farmers are more in inclined to use heavier pesticides.
“White-nose syndrome is as far west as Missouri and as far south as Georgia. It is estimated that the disease has killed about eight million bats since 2007, which is made worse by the fact that female bats generally only birth one pup per year, so their ability to recover from population loss is very limited,” he said.
The disease has spread across 26 different states and five Canadian provinces, according to Cornelison.
In Cornelison’s most recent reports, updated on Jan .12, he said the disease is also affecting bats by damaging additional tissues needed for hydration purposes.
“[White-nose syndrome] is believed to kill by damaging the wing tissues that normally allow bats to regulate water loss during hibernation. The fungus also repeatedly wakes bats from hibernation, causing them to burn crucial fat reserves, leading to dehydration, emaciation and exposure,” the report states.
Cornelison said he looks forward to seeing how his research develops and what his federal agency partnership might expose the university to.
“It’s always beneficial for a university to be engaged with federal entities that need research done and provide access to research funding that is generally much more difficult to get to. I have seen that people I collaborate with had no idea what Georgia State was before this and now this is spreading the name in the field of wildlife disease research,” Cornelison said.
