Comments on: More Bat Cave Stories http://mammalwatching.wordpress.com/2012/10/02/more-bat-cave-stories/ A blog for anyone interested in watching mammals in the wild Thu, 23 May 2013 02:42:34 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: mattinidaho http://mammalwatching.wordpress.com/2012/10/02/more-bat-cave-stories/#comment-1422 Wed, 03 Oct 2012 15:30:34 +0000 http://mammalwatching.wordpress.com/?p=2252#comment-1422 Gents,
Thanks for the comments. Vladimir, I see your points. John Fox is correct on the reason. Every fungicide that worked also killed cave invertebrates (crickets, springtails, etc), apparently highly sensitive. The microbial communities of caves are little understood, and every researcher I spoke with said that fungicides would highly alter the microbes. The risks seemed too high.

Overall, researchers are racing to get ahead of this disease. I think there will be many experiments. Some won’t work, but hopefully some will.

]]> By: Vladimir Dinets http://mammalwatching.wordpress.com/2012/10/02/more-bat-cave-stories/#comment-1421 Wed, 03 Oct 2012 10:20:46 +0000 http://mammalwatching.wordpress.com/?p=2252#comment-1421 That’s understandable, but hybernacula usually occupy only a small section of a cave. And if some species occurs only in that section, it is probably guano-dependent, so loss of bats would be a much greater blow to it than spraying fungicide.

]]> By: John Fox http://mammalwatching.wordpress.com/2012/10/02/more-bat-cave-stories/#comment-1420 Wed, 03 Oct 2012 01:43:19 +0000 http://mammalwatching.wordpress.com/?p=2252#comment-1420 Matt’s first post said they were concerned about the other life in natural caves. Not much life there, but what is there might be endemic. It would be bad form to wipe out a cave cricket or something.

]]> By: Vladimir Dinets http://mammalwatching.wordpress.com/2012/10/02/more-bat-cave-stories/#comment-1419 Wed, 03 Oct 2012 00:03:49 +0000 http://mammalwatching.wordpress.com/?p=2252#comment-1419 Wouldn’t it be cheaper to spray fungicide at hibernation sites than to built this artificial cave, which might or might not work?

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