![]() Advice is also available from the Commonwealth. The importance of this threat has not been missed by Wildlife Health Australia, which has produced guidelines for reporting and response to incursion. This includes tightening biosecurity measures and gaining missing information on bat biology so we are better prepared for a possible white-nose syndrome epidemic. destructans in Australia, and our study’s findings of widespread thermal cave suitability in south-eastern Australia, we urge immediate action. Even non-lethal impacts, however, will worsen the extinction-bound trajectory of several cave-roosting species, most notably the eastern and southern bent-winged bats. This knowledge gap makes it impossible to predict how they will respond if exposed to P. ![]() Consequently, white-nose syndrome has fuelled a large research program on the winter ecology and hibernation physiology of North American bats.īats in south-eastern Australia do enter a period of winter hibernation, but that is about the extent of what we know. Hibernation is key to predicting the susceptibility of bat populations to mortality from white-nose syndrome: those with less energy to spare over winter are more at risk. The infection is easily visible under UV light. destructans and would be susceptible to developing white-nose syndrome. Thus Australian bats, like their distant North American relatives, probably lack an effective immune response to P. destructans is endemic and widespread, few bats exhibit white‐nose syndrome and mortalities are rare.Īustralia’s unique wildlife is inherently at risk from invasive novel pathogens because of its long‐term biogeographical isolation. Accordingly, in Europe and Asia, where P. destructans has such catastrophic impacts on North American bats: the immune system of these species is evolutionarily naive to this fungal attack. The novel pathogen hypothesis explains why P. ![]() Since then, the disease has spread across North America, killing millions of bats in its wake, with many local populations experiencing 90 to 100% mortality. White-nose syndrome was first detected in the United States in 2006 at a popular tourist cave in the state of New York. Dr Lindy Lumsden Millions of bats wiped out in North America All caves occupied by the critically endangered southern bent-winged bat provide ideal thermal conditions for white-nose syndrome.
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