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Post by camv35s on Nov 24, 2009 1:32:39 GMT -5
???http://discovermagazine.com/photos/9-of-the-saddest-pictures-on-the-planethttp://discovermagazine.com/photos/9-of-the-saddest-pictures-on-the-planet
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Post by bannanny on Nov 24, 2009 23:07:56 GMT -5
Your link goes to Discover, but it says the page can't be shown cam...
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Post by kammy on Nov 26, 2009 19:06:04 GMT -5
When I do a search for "white, fuzzy fungus" - I got the article below: What's REALLY going on with the bats... and the bees...? "Bats reintroduced into Vermont caves hit by fungus" Researchers reintroduce healthy bats at 2 Vermont caves hit hard by mysterious fungus MICHAEL HILL AP News Oct 27, 2009 11:55 EDT www.newsmeat.com/news/meat.php?articleId=62052902&channelId=2951&buyerId=newsmeatcom&buid=3281"Wildlife biologists studying a mysterious fungus killing off hundreds of thousands of bats around America want to find out if they can repopulate caves decimated by the disease. Researchers will introduce 79 healthy little brown bats to two hibernation sites in Vermont hit hard by the fungus, which may have killed as many as 500,000 bats in the eastern United States over several winters. Scientists suspect a fungus that thrives in cold, moist caves causes white-nose syndrome, named for the sugary smudges of fungus on the noses and wings of hibernating bats. The repopulation experiment starting Tuesday at caves in Bridgewater and Stockbridge, Vt., is not aimed at curing the disease. But it could show whether affected caves can sustain new populations of hibernating bats. "Can you have bats successfully survive there? Or will they develop the disease even if there aren't any infected bats there?" asked Al Hicks, a wildlife biologist for New York's Department of Environmental Conservation. Hicks said that if the bats shipped in from Wisconsin survive the winter, that could provide evidence that bats can be successfully reintroduced to caves that housed infected animals. It also could show whether the disease persists at hibernation sites even after infected bats are gone. Entrances at the two sites are screened to keep in the bats. Gates will keep out people. First noted in upstate New York in 2006, the disease has spread around the Northeast and has been detected as far south as Virginia. Researchers worry about a mass die-off of bats, which help control the populations of insects that can damage wheat, apples and dozens of other crops. The repopulation project is a cooperative effort among conservation officials from Vermont, New York and the federal government."
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Post by kammy on Nov 26, 2009 19:11:52 GMT -5
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Post by kammy on Nov 26, 2009 20:26:40 GMT -5
Wondering if they have identified the fungus the bats have, and they have but, it seems inconclusive: www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2009/11/15/whats_killing_the_bats/?page=2"Researchers strongly suspect but have not proved that the sickness is caused by a newly identified cold-thriving soil fungus aptly named Geomyces destructans. (Some believe the fungus is a secondary infection that grows on bats with already weakened immune systems.) Nor have they unraveled the enigma of a perplexing chain of events that leads from an apparent fungal infection to erratic bat behavior to death by what appears to be starvation. The hallmark of the syndrome is a skin infection that creates holes in and scarring of the bats’ wing membranes, causing them to lose elasticity. “It’s challenging to think of why an animal might die of a skin infection. Isn’t that just like getting athlete’s foot?” says David Blehert, director of diagnostic microbiology at the National Wildlife Health Center in Wisconsin and lead author of the report that identified the fungus. But you can’t really liken it to that, he explains, because this infection “actively invades living skin cells.” Initial white-nose studies have produced two consistent findings: The fungus has been found on bats at every site where mass deaths have occurred, and most of the dead bats are emaciated. But the link between them has evaded scientists. The leading hypothesis -- Kunz shorthands it as “itch and scratch” -- is that the fungus irritates the bats’ skin, arousing them more frequently than normal in hibernation to groom it off. Those actions, the thinking goes, squander their fat reserves until, ultimately, they starve to death." Geomyces destructans botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/may2009.html"From these BLAST searches and additional sequencing of other species not in the database, Blehert et al. found that this new fungus belongs in the Ascomycota in the family Helotiaceae in the genus Geomyces, although it did not match any known species of Geomyces. After this molecular work and a search of the literature for any similar species of Geomyces, there was no other species of Geomyces that has curved conidia, except Geomyces pannorum, which has "occasionally curved" conidia. This fungus was clearly not G. pannorum, so it was decided that this finding represented a new species, a species unknown to science. " It doesn't appear to look like our fungus: my-stuff-dot-com.com/LB/Bat Fungus Geomyces.jpg[/img] "Besides the odd conidia, this new Geomyces species was found to have a very low optimum temperature for growth. These preferred growth temperatures that closely resemble the temperatures found in the bat hibernacula help to explain why G. destructans is probably restricted to growth in caves and other areas where the temperature remains constantly low."
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Post by bessie on Nov 26, 2009 20:57:43 GMT -5
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