Evaporative Water Loss Is a Plausible Explanation for Mortality of Bats from White-Nose Syndrome ...

• Main Authors: Willis, Craig K R, Menzies, Allyson K., Boyles, Justin G., Wojciechowski, Michał S.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2011
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Mammalia; Chiroptera; Chordata; Animalia; bats; bat; Myotis nattereri
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13527476; https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.13527476

(Uploaded by Plazi for the Bat Literature Project) White-nose syndrome (WNS) has caused alarming declines of North American bat populations in the 5 years since its discovery. Affected bats appear to starve during hibernation, possibly because of disruption of normal cycles of torpor and arousal. The importance of hydration state and evaporative water loss (EWL) for influencing the duration of torpor bouts in hibernating mammals recently led to "the dehydration hypothesis," that cutaneous infection of the wing membranes of bats with the fungus Geomyces destructans causes dehydration which in turn, increases arousal frequency during hibernation. This hypothesis predicts that uninfected individuals of species most susceptible to WNS, like little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus), exhibit high rates of EWL compared to less susceptible species. We tested the feasibility of this prediction using data from the literature and new data quantifying EWL in Natterer's bats (Myotis nattereri), a species that is, like other ...