{"id":57619,"date":"2019-10-31T07:43:51","date_gmt":"2019-10-31T14:43:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=57619"},"modified":"2019-10-30T15:53:59","modified_gmt":"2019-10-30T22:53:59","slug":"foster-bat-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/foster-bat-research\/","title":{"rendered":"NAU scientist collaborates on major genetic study of white-nose syndrome in bats"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Oct. 31, 2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Often maligned and largely misunderstood\nthroughout history, bats have more recently been recognized for the important\nrole they play in ecosystems throughout the world, pollinating flowers,\ndispersing seeds and controlling pests by eating insects. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But many North American species\nare now threatened by white-nose syndrome (WNS), a deadly fungal disease affecting\nmillions of bats, primarily in the eastern US. The Ecology and Evolution of\nInfectious Diseases program of the National Science Foundation (NSF) is funding\ntwo major research projects investigating the disease in hopes of preventing the\npotential extinction of some species in the region. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One such project, led by infectious\ndisease ecologists Kate Langwig\nand Joseph Hoyt from Virginia\nTech, is funded through a $2.9 million joint award from the NSF and the\nNational Natural Science Foundation of China to understand the long-term host\nand pathogen dynamics of WNS in bats. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Northern Arizona University wildlife disease ecologist Jeff Foster<\/strong> received a $563,000 subaward to collaborate with Langwig, Hoyt and several other scientists on the five-year project. Other collaborators are Beth Shapiro and A. Marm Kilpatrick from the University of California Santa Cruz and Jiang Feng and Keping Sun from Northeast Normal University in China. At NAU, Foster\u2019s team includes lab manager Katy Parise<\/strong> and a graduate student Foster will hire to assist on the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Foster, an associate professor\nof biology in the Pathogen and Microbiome\nInstitute<\/a>, will focus on the fungal genetics aspects of the project. WNS is\ncaused by the Pseudogymnoascus\ndestructans<\/em> (Pd) fungus, which colonizes the bat\u2019s skin, eating away at its\nwing membranes during hibernation. As a result, the fungus completely disrupts\nthe physiology of a hibernating bat, depleting its fat reserves, causing\nelectrolyte imbalance and increased exposure to harsh winters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although bats across Asia and\nEurope have survived with WNS for thousands of years, many bat species in North\nAmerica are susceptible to this disease, which has caused an unprecedented\ndecline in bat populations in the Northeast since its first detection in 2006.\nThe fungus thrives in the cold, damp caves of the region, spreading easily\namong the bats that cluster there in congregations of up to tens of thousands,\nhibernating for several months at a time. The project, titled \u201cLessons from the\npast: Synthesizing drivers of host persistence across a pathogen invasion\ngradient,\u201d seeks to understand past and present disease patterns to find out\nhow some hosts and pathogens can coexist and identify the mechanisms that bats\nuse to survive with this deadly disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NAU a key partner<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"Jeff<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNAU is a key partner on the\nproject, responsible for quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) testing\nof samples, which involves molecular detection and quantification as well as\nsequencing and comparative genomics of Pd,\u201d Foster said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By using a qPCR diagnostic\nassay, a lab technique for detecting the fungus, Foster and his team will confirm\ninfection status and measure the amount of Pd on more than 24,000 swab, tissue\nand fecal samples of individual bats to better understand the pathogen and the\nkey environmental factors that affect its growth, including temperature and\nhumidity. Foster will assess potential changes in the virulence of Pd by\ncomparing these samples with those collected over time and across geographic regions\nand continents\u2014comparing samples of the fungus in bats from Europe and Asia to\nsamples of the fungus in bats from North America. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Foster has received a previous grant from the NSF to study\nWNS in bats. This current project builds on that earlier work, which found the\nfungus came from Europe; that Eurasian bats were infected but did not die from\nthe disease; and that the fungus has adapted to living on the bats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhite-nose syndrome is among the most devastating wildlife\ndiseases ever recorded,\u201d Foster said. \u201cIn the past 13 years, this fungal\ndisease has killed millions, perhaps tens of millions, of bats in the U.S. and\nCanada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of the key goals of the\nNSF program is to understand how diseases spread, so we\u2019re interested in\ndispersal and transmission, interactions between pathogens and their hosts as\nwell as the role of the environment.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the loss of the bats, ecologists believe the bats\u2019\necosystem services\u2014which include eating mosquitoes as well as crop and forest\npests\u2014also may decline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WNS in western bat\npopulations<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Although this NSF-funded project is not targeted at western\nbats, Foster and other scientists are studying WNS that recently arrived in the\nwestern U.S., which is different in climate and is home to different species of\nbats that typically roost alone in caves and abandoned mines. The next steps\nfor studying WNS in the West include identifying the species affected, the\nlikely routes of invasion, determining numbers and distributions of western\nbats, assessing hibernation physiology and behavior, understanding the ecology\nof infection and assessing the effects of the disease. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early work in the West indicates lower amounts of the fungus\non bats, which may be due to it being during the early stages of invasion or a\nfeature of how WNS progresses in this different climate or different bat\nbehaviors. Foster thinks that because the climate in the West is generally\ndrier and warmer\u2014and because hibernation periods are shorter\u2014the fungus may not\nbe able to grow as effectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Foster, who came to NAU in 2007\nas a post-doctoral scholar, joined research faculty, left briefly for a\ntenure-track position with the University of New Hampshire, and then returned\nin 2017. His ongoing research focuses on WNS in bats, malaria in Hawaiian birds\nand pathogens in other animals, including livestock and waterfowl. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"NAU<\/figure>
\n

Kerry Bennett
Office of the Vice President for Research<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oct. 31, 2019 Often maligned and largely misunderstood throughout history, bats have more recently been recognized for the important role they play in ecosystems throughout the world, pollinating flowers, dispersing seeds and controlling pests by eating insects. But many North American species are now threatened by white-nose syndrome (WNS), a deadly fungal disease affecting millions…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":57621,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-academics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}