Winter/Spring 2012 Aesculapian Magazine - University of Georgia ...

A Plague on
North American Bats
By Helen Fosgate
White-Nose Syndrome is spreading through states and
devastating colonies of bats from Canada to North Carolina.
Dr. Kevin Keel (BS ’90; MS ’93; DVM ’97)
opens the refrigerator, lifts out several
culture samples, and sets them on
the stainless-steel table. “Oh boy,” he sighs,
glancing at the Petri dishes. The fuzzy, white
growth on the medium confirms what he and
others in the lab already feared. The samples
— taken from Kentucky bats — are positive for
Geomyces destructans, a fungus that is killing
bats in Canada and in the U.S. from New York
to North Carolina. As of December 2011, the
fungus has been found in 19 states and four
Canadian provinces—and there’s no end in
sight.
Keel, a veterinarian and wildlife
pathologist at the Southeastern Cooperative
Wildlife Disease Study (SCWDS, commonly
pronounced “squid-us”) in Athens, along
with colleagues Justin Brown (PhD ’07)
and Lisa Last (DVM ’10), tested more than a
hundred dead bats this past winter, verifying
the fungus’ spread to new states—including
four in the Southeast since January 2011.
“This latest confirmation is sobering
because Kentucky has a tremendous
number of caves and bats — and more
bat hibernacula [hibernation sites] —than
anybody even knows about,” said Keel.
Photo by craig Stihler
Aesculapian Winter/Spring 2012 13