[basjoos]

This fungus (Geomyces destructans) was recently introduced from the Old World and kills bats by invading the bat's body while they are in hibernation and their slowed metabolism is unable to resist its spread. Old world bats are resistant to it, but not New World bats. It is mainly killing out the colonial cave dwelling bat species and likely to continue spreading across temperate North America killing most of these bats. Hopefully a few individuals will prove to have some resistance to the fungus and can repopulate after all of the susceptible individuals have been killed, which is likely what happened in Eurasia when this fungus first made the jump to bats over there. Non-hibernating bats (tropical species and the few temperate species that migrate south for the winter) are unlikely to be affected by this fungus and the solitary habits of the non-colonial hibernators hopefully will allow them to avoid the worst effects of this fungus.

It will be interesting to see what effect this bat die out will have on the populations of the bat's main competition (wippoorwills and nighthawks) for the night sky. Since these birds lack echo-location and hunt by sight, they are limited to hunting insects at dust, dawn, and when the moon is up. They even time their egg's hatching so the hatchlings greatest food demand will be during a full moon. An inadvertent effect of the spread of light pollution is that it has benefited these birds by allowing them to hunt all night on moonless nights.