Deep within the New Brunswick Museum’s (NBM) collection, a team of dedicated summer students is racing against time to unlock the secrets of a devastating disease that’s decimating eastern Canada’s bat populations.
White-nose Syndrome (WNS), a fungal infection that thrives in cold temperatures, has been spreading rapidly since its discovery in Ontario and Quebec in 2009. By 2011, it had reached the Maritimes, leaving a trail of death and destruction in its wake. In New Brunswick alone, the once-thriving bat colonies that NBM Zoologist Dr. Donald McAlpine and Research Associate Karen Vanderwolf monitored have dwindled from approximately 7,000 individuals to a mere 20.
But amidst this ecological disaster, a glimmer of hope has emerged. Buried in the NBM’s freezers lies a unique collection of approximately 7,000 Little Brown, Northern Long-eared, and Big Brown Bat specimens, all collected from Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritime provinces between 1996 and the early 2000s – before WNS was even on the radar. These bats, submitted by the public for rabies testing, have been cryogenically preserved, their tissues frozen in time, waiting for scientists to unlock their secrets.
This summer, NBM Zoology students Maddie Empey, Alyson Hasson, and Neil Hughes have taken on the crucial task of preparing and cataloguing these precious specimens. Under the guidance of Dr. McAlpine, they’re carefully measuring, skinning, and sampling each bat, documenting every detail, no matter how small. The data they collect will be used to compare genetic variation in eastern Canadian bats before and after the introduction of WNS, providing valuable insights into the disease’s spread and potential vulnerabilities.
“This is a unique sample, in that it is probably the largest collection of those bat species most heavily impacted by WNS taken immediately before the onset of the fungal infection,” Dr. McAlpine explains. “Once archived in the NBM, these samples will be a source of research data for many, many years.” By studying these pre-WNS bats, scientists may be able to identify genetic factors that made some individuals more resistant to the disease, information that could influence conservation efforts and potentially help save other bat populations.
