cave medicine
an anecdote to apocalypse
Apocalypse unfurls across our faces. In the winter darkness, white blooms over our noses and spreads, like sundown, to our muzzles, our wings sucking up energy stores until the only thing alive is this fungus. Instead of clicks, small thuds echo the cave. Across the mountains, wings fill the sky dancing with the fiery Aurora swooping low to skim the milky-blue lake, the sea of golden grass, joyous chirps echo from our cousins, shielded by cave medicine. Oh brothers, sisters, cast protection over us: that lacy spiderweb of bugs too small to thank too important not to.
90% of little brown bats, northern long-eared bats, and tri-colored bats have died since 2018. Bat communities throughout North America have been destroyed by White-nose syndrome, a fungal disease that targets hibernating bats.
However, the disease hasn’t touched the western Canadian bats in Lilliouet, British Columbia. A new study has revealed one potential source of protection: their wing microbiomes.
The researchers found that there is incredible diversity in the microbes living on the wings of bats in Lilliouet. Among the many types of bacteria and fungus on the wings were some that produce compounds against White-nose Syndrome.
Creativity is one anecdote to apocalypse. The best solutions are often the unexpected ones and to find them we must learn from survivors.
What spoke to me about this study was not only the evocative setting and animals (one night they were unable to capture any bats due to the Northern Lights lighting up the sky!), but the potential that we might be able to help a vulnerable bat community by studying resilient ones. Based on these and similar findings, the researchers, Wildlife Conservation Society of Canada, and Thompson Rivers University are currently refining a probiotic cocktail to protects bats from White-nose Syndrome.
And that gives me hope.