Researcher holds little brown bats. Credit: Michigan Technological University |
Despite the vampire
stories you may have read, bats are our friends. The little winged mammals eat
more than their body weight in insects every night, making them extremely
valuable to farmers, forest managers and anyone who doesn't like bugs. In fact,
the dollar value of bats in pest control has been estimated at $508 million a
year.
Bats are the
only mammals that can fly. There are more than 1,000 species. In fact, 1 in
5 mammals is a bat.
And in the fall,
bats often migrate hundreds of miles to abandoned mines and caves where they
hibernate through the winter months. Deep in the caverns, they cuddle up in
tight, furry clusters, while scientists study them, trying to figure out the
hows and whys of a bat plague called White Nose Syndrome and what, if
anything, can be done to prevent or stop it.
White Nose
Syndrome has killed nearly 7 million bats since it first appeared in the US
in New York State. The deadly fungal disease has spread to 19 states as far
west as Missouri, as far south as Alabama and north into Canada.
Although White
Nose Syndrome has not yet been seen in Michigan, where nine species of bats
are heading for their winter homes -- mostly in 75 or 80 abandoned mines in
the western Upper Peninsula. And there, a team of researchers led by Joseph
Bump of Michigan Technological University and Alexis Sullivan, one of his
graduate students, is using a novel chemical "fingerprinting"
technique called stable hydrogen isotopes to determine where the hibernating
bats originated.
Sullivan and
Bump reported in the July 2012 issue of the journal Ecological Applications
on their use of stable hydrogen isotopes to track the travels of the little
brown bats that hibernate in three mines in the western UP.
Sullivan, who is
first author on the paper, is now working on dual Master of Science degrees
in Forest Molecular Genetics and Biotechnology at Michigan Tech and the
Swedish University of Agricultural Science. She will receive degrees from
both universities as part of the ATLANTIS Program, a transatlantic
educational project jointly funded by the US Department of Education and the
European Union.
Sullivan, Bump
and colleagues Rolf Peterson and Laura Kruger studied the little brown bats
that winter in the Quincy Mine in Hancock, Mich., the Caledonia Mine near
Ontonagon, Mich., and the Norway Mine in Norway, Mich. They collected bat
hair and tested it to identify the hydrogen fingerprint of the water where
the bat grew the hair. Ecologists have developed maps of the distinctive
hydrogen fingerprints of water from different locations, so the chemical fingerprints
from the bat hair can be matched to the flying mammals' probable origins.
Up to now,
stable hydrogen isotopes have been used mostly to track migratory birds.
"Relatively little is known about bat-to-bat interactions or how far
bats travel between seasonal habitats," Sullivan explains. Earlier
attempts to use hydrogen isotopes with bats stalled because most hibernating
bats don't make dramatic seasonal migrations, and they have unclear molt
patterns, making it difficult to connect their hair to a given habitat, she
adds.
In their latest
study, Sullivan, Bump and colleagues were able to estimate with 95 percent
certainty the summer origins of the tens of thousands of bats that hibernate
in the Quincy Mine, the 23,000 bats in the Norway Mine and the estimated
quarter of a million bats that call the Caledonia Mine their winter home.
Using the hydrogen "fingerprints" from hair samples, they located
the geographic areas from which the bats migrate -- some as far as 565
kilometers (351 miles) from their hibernation mine.
"This novel
application of stable hydrogen isotopes can help predict which hibernation
sites are likely to exchange bats," says Bump. Bat-to-bat contact is
believed to be the way white-nose syndrome is spread, so understanding the
bats' movements can help us know which hibernation sites are connected and
how disease could potentially be transmitted among locations."
And why should
anyone care what happens to these reclusive winged creatures that weigh less
than half an ounce and average 3.4 inches long?
"First,
they are amazing mammals. Second, we should care about little brown bats
because they eat millions of things for which we care much less, like
mosquitoes," says Bump.
Michigan
Tech's bat research was funded by the National Park Service Great Lakes
Network, the Ecosystems Science Center and the School of Forest Resources
and Environmental Science at Michigan Tech.
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided byMichigan Technological University, via Newswise.
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