So the bats are basically starving because they are waking up too often
and burning their fat reserves. What does it take to wake up a bat?
Light? Pheromones? Existential Angst? There's something that gets
them awake and moving en masse that the fungi fake. Maybe they
fluoresce a tiny bit, but there's a lot of bats. Maybe they mimic the
effect of a pheromone so that one bat fluttering about puts enough
pheromone in the air to wake more bats up. Maybe there's some separate
effect of fungi in the guano that get stirred up by one bat and its the
mixture that wakes them up. Maye the fungi in their ears messes with
their echolocation. Maybe the fungi don't so much like the cold, they
like the gradient. Maybe it just hurts.
Yet another good reason not to move to a cave in North Dakota.
Nicholas Thompson wrote:
I wonder if it has anything to do with the extraordinary blossoming of
mosquito populations here.
Ugh.
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([email protected])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
[Original Message]
From: Owen Densmore <[email protected]>
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]>
Date: 8/19/2009 10:44:29 PM
Subject: [FRIAM] Northeast Region, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
There is an epidemic within the bat community of the US that has a
surprising rate of spread, and is apparently fatal, and may result in
the loss of bats within the US:
http://www.fws.gov/northeast/white_nose.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112035629
This will have huge impact on farming and the rest of us due to the
bat population being key in controlling the insect population.
Anyone got a clue on how this could be controlled? Sounds complex to
me! Seriously, if any researchers listening in have ideas, pass them
on to the folks trying to understand this.
-- Owen
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
