Deadly bat disease reaches Tennessee, raising prospect of more insects, disease and pesticides

UPDATE, Feb. 22: Reporter Morgan Simmons and photographer Adam Brimer of the Knoxville News-Sentinel took a trip with Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency field biologist Sterling Daniels, left, and Nature Conservancy cave specialist Cory Holliday to a cave near the Kentucky border to look for white noses. They didn't find any, but came back with a story, photos and video. The crew had to decontaminate all their clothing and equipment to avoid bringing into the cave whatever causes the disease. That's a cautionary note that should be included in stories on the subject, because stories about caves can encourage amateurs to go spelunking without taking proper precautions.

In November we reported the mysterious white-nose syndrome affecting bats in the Northeast might be moving south. Now those fears have been confirmed. Two bats that died during hibernation in Worley's Cave in Sullivan County in northeast Tennessee have tested positive for the highly contagious disease, Anne Paine of The Tennessean reports. The cave is near Virginia, the southernmost state where the disease had been recorded.

Tennessee officials fear bat losses in their state from the disease could match the entire losses in the Northeast because the state has more than 9,600 caves, some of which host colonies of up to 100,000 bats during the winter, Paine reports. "If we lose these guys, we're going to end up with a lot more insects flying around destroying agricultural crops and forest trees and defoliating them," Thomas Kunz, professor of biology and director of the Center for Ecology and Conservation Biology at Boston University, told Paine. The 1 million bats killed by the disease in the northeast since 2006 "would have eaten an estimated 694 tons of insects over the warm months," Paine writes.

Increased pesticide use is one option for combating the increased insect population. "That has adverse consequences on human health and other things," Kunz told Paine. "Keystone species keep things in balance — the balance of nature. They hold up the arch that is the ecosystem. When you remove a keystone species, the ecosystem collapses." Many think the disease is spread by human cavers on their equipment. State-owned caves in Tennessee have been closed to try and combat the spread, but the white-nose cases occurred in a privately owned cave. Most caves are privately owned. (Read more)