Oral vaccines could give wild bats a better chance at surviving white nose syndrome, the fungal disease that has ravaged bat colonies in North America. In lab tests conducted on captured little brown bats, vaccination led to fewer infected bats developing lesions and more of the bats surviving, researchers report May 1 in Scientific Reports.
White nose syndrome, caused by the fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans, has killed around 7 million bats in the United States since 2006. In some regions, the disease cut some bat colonies by 75 percent. The white fuzz grows across bats’ skin when the animals hibernate, eventually making them wake up, fly around and waste energy needed to survive winter (SN Online: 1/29/16).