The decline in bats has a myriad of environmental consequences, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of our bats are insectivores, so they\u2019re eating mosquitoes and midges and moths,\u201d he said. \u201cSome of these insects carry diseases. Some of them cause damage to our crops. And so bats play a key role in keeping a lot of these insects at bay.\u201d<\/p>\n
Advances in how to treat white-nose syndrome and better support bat populations in the face of the devastating disease has made Turner feel \u201ccautiously hopeful,\u201d he said. But he worries about continued population recovery for the long-lived species \u2014 bats can live for up to 35 years, and reproduce slowly, so it\u2019s hard to know how many surviving bats are of reproductive age, and how younger bats are faring against white-nose syndrome. He also is concerned that any additional disease or infection introduced to local bat populations could further complicate population recovery.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s where the work of Stronsick and other rehabilitators in the region comes in, Turner said. Female bats have been more impacted by white-nose syndrome, since they hibernate longer, so there are now more male bats than female bats.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery female that can be saved by rehabbers \u2026 gives that species, that population, a leg up on persistence into the future,\u201d he said. \u201cThe more females we have, the sooner we have them, and the more they\u2019re able to produce young, the faster we can start seeing recovery. And for such a long-lived and slow reproducing species, we\u2019re already looking at a very long timeline for some semblance of recovery.\u201d<\/p>\n
Turner and his team have also worked with Stronsick in research on the disease and helping infected bats recover.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The decline in bats has a myriad of environmental consequences, he said. \u201cAll of our bats are insectivores,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[12004,28,30,29],"class_list":["post-16508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-bats","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}