Bad news for America’s bats: Deadly fungus persists in caves

December 2012. Researchers have found that the organism that causes deadly white-nose syndrome persists in caves long after it has killed the bats in those caves. A study just published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology shows that the fungus can survive in soil for months, even years, after the bats have departed.

Caves and mines are reservoirs for the fungus
This is not good news for the bat population, says lead author Jeff Lorch, a research associate in the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "We have found that caves and mines, which remain cool year-round, can serve as reservoirs for the fungus, so bats entering previously infected sites may contract white-nose syndrome from that environment. This represents an important and adverse transmission route."

"This certainly presents additional challenges," adds David Blehert, a microbiologist at the U.S. Geological Survey National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, who also led the study. "It's important that we have completed this foundational work that further implicates the environment in the ecology of this infectious disease. We can now collectively move forward to address this problem."

Fungus cannot survive in warm temperatures
The fungus cannot grow at warm temperatures, so scientists have long wondered how it survived over the summer. The new study sheds light on this mystery, proving that the fungus can survive over the summer in the cool soil of the caves and mines where bats hibernate.

The researchers analysed soil samples collected during the summer (when bats were absent) from 14 caves and mines in which bats had been observed with white-nose syndrome, and they found viable samples of the fungus, called Geomyces destructans.
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