BATTLING BAT FUNGUS

Abstract

AS MICROBIOLOGIST Hazel A. Barton of Northern Kentucky University descended into the cool, damp, pitch-black darkness of an abandoned iron mine in Pennsylvania, she switched on the LED lamp on her helmet just as she had hundreds of times before and prepared to take stock of another subterranean ecosystem. But she started getting an uneasy feeling that something wasn’t right. “It’s hard to describe,” Barton says. “But it felt evil.” As she continued into the mine, last worked a century ago, Barton realized her premonition was right. Everywhere she looked, bat bodies were covered with white fungus. “The bats flying around were zombies,” she says. “On the cave floor, there were hundreds of bat carcasses. Because they decompose quickly, there were piles of bones with loose flesh. In some places, it was just a brown, sludgy mass.” It turns out that the fast-spreading fungal disease, named white-nose syndrome for the visually striking white Geomyces destructans ...