Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons^™

Energy Conserving Thermoregulatory Patterns And Lower Disease Severity In A Bat Resistant To The Impacts Of White-Nose Syndrome, Marianne S. Moore, Kenneth A. Field, Melissa J. Behr, Gregory G. Turner, Morgan E. Furze, Daniel Wf Stern, Paul R. Allegra, Sarah A. Bouboulis, Chelsey Diana Musante, Megan E. Vodzak, Matthew E. Biron, Melissa B. Meierhofer, Winifred F. Frick, Jeffrey T. Foster, Daryl Howell, Joseph A. Kath, Allen Kurta, Gerda Nordquist, Joseph S. Johnson, Thomas M. Lilley, Benjamin W. Barrett, Deeann M. Reeder

Faculty Journal Articles

The devastating bat fungal disease, white-nose syndrome (WNS), does not appear to affect all species equally. To experimentally determine susceptibility differences between species, we exposed hibernating naïve little brown myotis (Myotis lucifugus) and big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) to the fungus that causes WNS, Pseudogymnoascus destructans (Pd). After hibernating under identical conditions, Pd lesions were significantly more prevalent and more severe in little brown myotis. This species difference in pathology correlates with susceptibility to WNS in the wild and suggests that survival is related to different host physiological responses. We observed another fungal infection, …