Bats and white nose

When are bats most active? The answer goes to U.S. Forest Service ecologist Ted Wheeler. This is not the most active time for bats. Speaker 1: Bats are most active in the summer months, using the fall to find a location for winter hibernation. An encounter with a bat during the autumn could be an awkward one. Speaker 2: That puts them in places that they don't normally show up. Sometimes they're in unfamiliar situations, so people will find, say, a bat under their picnic umbrella that they're putting away for the season, that the bat decided to come in there and roost. Whereas during the summer, when the bats are most active, they're not doing that. Speaker 1: But before going batty about a possible bat encounter, Weller reminds us about the benefits of bats. Speaker 2: Most of the bats that we have in North America are insect eating bats, and if you think about it, what other animals are out there at night eating insects and bats can go out there and keeping those insect populations in check. Speaker 1: As a bat's diet is not just insects, but for several species pollen, nectar or fruit, allowing for pollination of flowers with benefits in mind. Weller is among those studying a potential threat to bat populations over the past two decades. White nose syndrome. Speaker 2: This particular fungus really thrives in cold, wet conditions like the places that bats hibernate. The disease got into their caves, the fungus gets on the bats, and it kills large numbers of bats. Speaker 1: With transmission of this lethal fungus by bats believed to be from travel from cave to cave. Some of the tech used by Weller and others studying bats include innovations that may provide further information about white nose syndrome infection. Speaker 2: These bats would become impacted by the disease. Maybe they're hungry, maybe they're thirsty. But they started becoming more active during the winter than we otherwise would have suspected. By sharing data about when bats are active using these echolocation detectors on the landscape, we can start to see generally we have low levels of activity. Wow. All of a sudden we're seeing more activity. Perhaps this is a place where bats are being impacted by white nose syndrome, or maybe something else that we want to check out. Speaker 1: