Differential Population Responses to White‐Nose Syndrome Between Two Michigan Bat Hibernacula Are Not due to Differences in Host Susceptibility
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT Disease outcomes result from the interaction between host, pathogen, and environmental factors. Understanding how these components interact to influence spatial and temporal variations in disease severity can enhance our insights into the drivers of disease outbreaks, ultimately improving our ability to mitigate the impact of disease through better forecasts and management actions. White‐nose syndrome (WNS) in bats, caused by the fungal pathogen Pseudogymnoascus destructans (Pd), has been detected in hibernating bats across much of the United States and Canada. This pathogen has led to widespread population declines in some bat species, for example, Myotis lucifugus ; however, not all infected populations exhibit similar decreases in numbers. Despite long‐term detection and high infection levels, the population of M. lucifugus that uses Tippy Dam, in northern Michigan, as a hibernaculum has not experienced a decline compared to other populations in the state. To assess local population effects that may contribute to reduced disease severity at Tippy Dam, we brought 30 hibernating M. lucifugus from Tippy Dam and 30 from a geographically similar hibernaculum with a history of declines from WNS into captivity at the U.S. Geological Survey, National Wildlife Health Center. We challenged the bats with a Pd inoculum and monitored survival, pathology, and Pd loads for up to 120 days. This allowed us to remove local environmental effects that could influence WNS disease severity. We observed no effect of source population on either survival or wing damage from Pd infection. Our results suggest that population persistence and lowered disease severity in Tippy Dam are likely driven by local environmental factors found within the dam. As Pd continues to spread westward, understanding environmental factors that influence the severity of Pd infection in hibernating bats has the potential to guide management decisions and help predict the survival of susceptible bat species in the western United States.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".