Impacts of white-nose syndrome observed during long-term monitoring of a midwestern bat community

White-nose syndrome (WNS) is an emerging fungal disease suspected to have infected Indiana caves in the winter of 2010–2011.This disease places energetic strains on cave-hibernating bats by forcing them to wake and use energy reserves. It has caused >5.5 million bat deaths across eastern North America, and may be the driving force for extinction of certain bat species. White-nose syndrome infection can be identified in hibernacula, but it may be difficult to determine whether bats in a particular area are affected if no known hibernacula exist. Thus, our aim was to use long-term monitoring data to examine changes in a summer population away from hibernacula that may be attributable to WNS effects during winter. We used capture data from a long-term bat-monitoring project in central Indiana with data from 10 repeatedly netted sites consistent across all reproductive periods. We modeled capture data by WNS exposure probability to assess changes in relative abundance of common species a...

白鼻综合征(White-nose syndrome, WNS)是一种新兴真菌病害，被推测于2010-2011年冬季侵染印第安纳州的洞穴。该病害会迫使洞穴冬眠蝙蝠苏醒并消耗体内能量储备，对其造成能量胁迫。其已导致北美东部超550万只蝙蝠死亡，或成为部分蝙蝠物种灭绝的关键诱因。可在冬眠位点(hibernacula)中检测到白鼻综合征感染，但若无已知冬眠位点，则难以判定某一区域内的蝙蝠是否受该病害侵染。因此本研究旨在利用长期监测数据，探究远离冬眠位点的夏季蝙蝠种群的变化，该变化或与冬季白鼻综合征的影响相关。本研究使用印第安纳州中部一项长期蝙蝠监测项目的捕获数据，涵盖10个在所有繁殖期均持续开展网捕的监测位点。本研究基于白鼻综合征暴露概率对捕获数据进行建模，以评估常见物种相对丰度的变化……