University Place

So we have two speakers for this session. One is J. Paul White who works for the DNR's Bureau of Natural Heritage Conservation as a mammal ecologist. That's kind of the dangered and threatened area of the DNR. He's been with the DNR for nine years, and has been studying mostly bats since 2007. He currently helps in the monitoring of the health and populations in Wisconsin. Bat populations and is also... Coordinates the volunteer efforts which is one of the whole themes of this conference, is citizen volunteers, citizen scientists, and increasing public awareness of the importance of bats. So this is... I know a lot of people in here have probably read about the whole white nose thing and everything. Bats are a very important part of our ecology in Wisconsin. Thank you. It's a little bright to be talking about bats right now, but. As Ressa said my name is Paul White. I originate from Northern Wisconsin, Mercer area but I now live in Madison and work for the Department of Natural Resources. Here to talk about bats. Bats around the world are actually quite diverse. There's over 1250 species world wide. They eat anything from frogs, to scorpions, to nectar, to fruit. Of course insects and maybe a couple of species might even drink blood. Overall, if you can look presentation you'll see that most of the things that you'll see there either have a direct or indirect benefit because of bats. Why do bats need protection? Well they often congregate in large concentrations and in smaller areas. So whether it's an attic or a barn in the summer or a cave or a mine in the winter, bats are coming from a large area, regionally and going into these sites and often are very vulnerable to catastrophic events, whether it's predation or disturbance. They are very long lived for their size and they typically only have one pup per year. So if you take an adult out of that equation you can drastically reduce the fecundity of that population. Overall the bat predators, obviously humans play a role in that as well. We definitely see predators around these concentration areas. whether it's caves or mines, bat houses and it runs the gambit from snakes to owls, raccoon, cats. Wisconsin bats are all insectivorous. They're the wolves of the sky. They are the primary night time flying insect predator in Wisconsin. And they are very hungry. They eat anywhere from 1200 to 1500 mosquito sized insects in an hour, and that's a female nursing a little brown bat. So they can eat up to their body weight in insects per night. And that's eight to ten grams of an animal. While it doesn't seem like much when you talk about an animal that size, but if you were to look at me, 150 pounds, trying to eat my body weight in say quarter pound cheese burgers it would be about 600 per night. And then to do that over, and over, and over again. So these bats are doing this often in large colonies supporting not only a local area, but a large regional area as well. So we know that they are very valuable because of the insects that they are eating. A recent study in 2011 science actually looked at the benefits of bats on the agricultural industry and basically it means more bats in the landscape, less pesticides used. In Wisconsin alone they estimated anywhere from 658 million all the way to 1.5 billion dollars that bats provide on an annual bases in insect predation control. And this was just talking about the agricultural industry. It's not talking about the human benefits or the benefits to forestry as well. So what are the species that we have in the state? There are seven different species and they can loosely be categorized by how they deal with Wisconsin winters. Just as some of you might decide to leave Wisconsin in the harsh winters, so do bats. Other bats will try to stay in Wisconsin, but they will seek out hibernation sites. Caves, mines, tunnels, anywhere where they can find suitable temperatures and relative humidity. Now the bats of Wisconsin, these are our tree bats species. They tend to be very colorful bats. They migrate as far south as Missouri, Florida and even Mexico. They'll often look like the foliage that they're roosting in. You can see here, there is an Eastern Red bat hanging. They typically hang by one foot, looking like a leaf dangling in the leaves. The hoary bat which is the largest bat in the state. Anywhere from 12 to 14 inch wing span and they'll look just like a pine cone hanging in the conifer. So where do the other bats go? What do they do, since they're reliant on insects and Wisconsin is obviously not very insect friendly during the winter? Well, their solution is to hibernate. So many of these bat species will spend over half of their life in a hibernating state. So survival by hibernation is not as glamours as it might seem. They have to first find these hibernation sites which like I said they're not originally as abundant so there are only a few of these locations throughout the state. And they're looking for specific temperatures. Certain species have certain requirements. Some species would rather like it colder. Say 32 degrees. Or others would like it 45 or 50 degrees. So they're looking for these sites that are predation free but then also has the relative humidity and temperature they're looking for. The species are considered the cave bat species. And this is a big brown bat. They pretty much break every rule we have for bat species. If somebody calls me in the middle of the night and says "Hey I've got a bat in my house." I say, "Well it's a big brown bat." "Oh I have a bat flying in the middle of winter." And this was before white nose, but "I have a bat flying in the middle of winter" It's likely a big brown. I've seen them flying on Christmas day, I've seen them flying in the middle of January. They can hibernate in very extreme conditions near freezing, even sub-freezing temperatures. They will congregate in large areas. Or in areas like barns, attics, but they will also, they do really well in urban environments. Little Brown bats, they're probably our most conspicuous bat in the state. And they're really found close to water areas. Riparian areas, lakes, rivers and streams. All of these areas bats are considered state threatened. And because of the threat of white nose syndrome, which I'll explain in just a few moments. These are the bats that will-- very similar to Big Brown bats-- will congregate in bat houses, in attics and form large colonies. Anywhere from ten, to fifty to a hundred, even a thousand individuals at a time. These colonies are made up of just females that are nursing, that are pregnant, and they give birth around June 1st. The pups take around three to four weeks to become flight, become volant, and be able to fly on their own and forage. The Eastern Pipistrelle is our smallest bat. They're probably the size of my thumb, maybe five to eight grams. So a very small bat. They're kind of the old grumpy ones of the bunch. They will, if you walk into a cave, they'll be off by themselves. Their not going to be roosting in a large cluster. They're generally very solitary individuals. They often will roost in oak clusters, leaf clusters as well as squirrel nests. The northern long-eared bat. This bat was recently federally listed as threatened. It's also state listed as threatened. They like to hibernate in caves, cracks and crevasses so they're really hard to find when you enter these hibernation sites. They're equally as hard to find in summer, in summer landscapes as well. They tend to roost underneath loose bark but also in cracks and crevasses along trees as well; live and dead trees. And so we use a multifaceted approach to monitor bats. Not only through citizen science but also through research and development. We use a multi-variety of tools. Acoustic surveys, bat roost surveys and we often are developing partnerships on a daily basis, not only with citizens but also with folks that own some of these maternity sites or hibernation sites. We value those partnerships immensely. So simply said, we want to keep them here, we want to keep them for as long as possible. And healthy as well. These are some of the threats that face Wisconsin bats. Whether it's habitat loss, wind farms, but by far and away the most detrimental aspect to bats as a whole, at least the cave bat species, is white-nose syndrome. I will just briefly describe that in just a few moments. But first, how do we study bats? First we have to figure out where exactly they're located. We have to look at their life history and like I said the cave bats in general are hibernating six to eight months of the year. They make up a large percentage of that pie. That pie chart. So, during the spring, April and May is when they are emerging from these hibernation sites. The females have already mated, they actually mate in August and September and they store the sperm until the point in which they wake up in April and May and they won't have to waste time finding a date in the spring of the year. So they are, in June and July, they give birth to one pup per year typically, and they form these large maternity colonies in attics and barns and tree roosts and such. So we have to follow this time line as we try and follow the bat population. In the winter again, we're looking for sites that are suitable that hold a temperature that's anywhere from freezing all the way up to 50 degrees, and it has to have high relative humidity. As you can see here, this is a picture of Wisconsin. They are not evenly distributed. These are sites that we've looked at. We've distilled around a thousand possible sites. Whether it's caves, mines, and tunnels, to about 150 locations that we know of throughout the state. If you look at the distribution they're mostly in the Southwest. There are some up into our county, but then they're kind of smattered throughout the rest of the state. That mainly has to do with the geology and also the mining history that we have in the unglaciated part of the Southwest and in Door County as well. So when were in these sites we're often counting bats, we're looking we're identifying them on the roost. We're not taking them down at all. We're trying to get in and out as fast as possible. Because any disturbance during the winter can disturb these bats to where they wake up and they might burn through 30 to 60 days worth of body fat just in that extra arousal period. So we're also looking for marked individuals. There's ways that we can actually track bats over time, whether using a band, or a small PIT tag, similar to how you would track a pet, like a cat or a dog. We also do white nose syndrome surveillance while we're in these sites. We're looking for bats that seem, that are showing evidence of white-nose syndrome. This is a bat here that has white-nose syndrome. As you can see, it has a white mussel but it also has white fungus along the forearms and also the tail as well. White-nose syndrome is a fungal disease. Recently new to science, that is devastating bat populations. Not only in the Northeast, but now in the Midwest, and most recently and getting into other areas as well. We believe that it has been brought from Europe and possibly even Asia, accidentally by somebody that was visiting a commercial cave site in New York in 2006. It has since spread to 27 states and five Canadian provinces, and it has effected more than 6 million bats so far. That's just the numbers that we can kind of put together, we certainly know of. It's likely other bat species that are effected that we many not have a good count on. What we're seeing is wing damage, to the point where the fungus not only looks superficial but it actually will invade the skin tissue, to the point where it's disrupting their normal hibernation cycle. Typically bats are waking up anywhere from 15 to 20 days on average, during their hibernation cycle. So they will excrete any fluid they might have, they might lick them selves clean of any water that they would have and then go right back to sleep. With white-nose syndrome, it accelerates that process to where they wake up anywhere from three to five days on average and they burn through that fat reserve that is necessary to subsist for six to eight months without food or water. So it's not only causing damage to the wing, which is obviously very important for flight, but it affects them in physiological ways that we're still trying to figure out. But basically it forces bats out of hibernation in search of either unaffected hibernation sites or insects where there just isn't really any insects available in the middle of winter. They're often dying of exposure outside of these sites. So this is an example of what I had mentioned where all of a sudden you've got, you've moved up your time table, you have a short energy, you have a specific energy budget which they budget for and they've got six to eight months worth of body fat and all of a sudden you've reduced that, and that forces them to leave in the middle of winter when there just isn't anything available. So unfortunately what we're seeing is in some cases overall decline at 95% or more, and some sites you can go to caves or mines and just won't find a bat anymore. This is just kind of a summary of what I just described. It affects seven different species of hibernating bats. We've also found it on five additional species that don't necessarily hibernate. We're not entirely sure how that affects them, but we know that they could potentially be a carrier as well. So, how is it transmitted? Well we know that bats are obviously very mobile and that they're moving one site to another and especially in the fall, where they're looking for hibernation sites but they're also looking to mate during that time of year. So if they go into a hibernation site that is already infected, they might be inadvertently be bringing it from one site to another. We also know that if a site is completely devoid of bats, and it's infected, and if a novel bat goes in there that's uninfected, there's a chance that bat could become infected with white-nose syndrome. We also know, just anecdotally that humans, if they're visiting these sites, whether it's commercial caves or whether it's researchers like us going into these sites, that there's a strong risk that we can move this as well. So we take bio-security measures very seriously during the winter and any time we enter these sites. So this is a spread map of white-nose syndrome. The circle indicates the first county where they found it in New York in 2006. What you don't see here and I literally just got an e-mail before I came here, is they just found white-nose syndrome in Washington state. Which is a game changer. So at this point, it's pretty much been on the Northeast, Midwest side of things, and like I said this map doesn't even show Washington on there, and the fact that they just confirmed it in that state really is going to put the Western bat working groups on high alert, if they weren't already. This is Wisconsin's map as of last year, the sites that we know of, at least the counties. This we have not released our results from 2015, 2016 results, and this map is drastically going to change. We're unfortunately seeing white-nose in a lot of different areas. We're seeing the decline similar to out East, where 70, 90, even 100% declines in some of these sites. So, expect more information on that front in May. So, unfortunately with these bats, the cave bats, we expect possible regional extensions of these species. So that makes everything that we do more important, but also the citizen science part of this as well. So what we've done is we've established working groups. We've looked at legal protections like I said, we've protected all of our bats as state listed. We've continued to forge partnerships then also engaged in research opportunities to try and figure out how we can get ahead of this disease. In the summer, we're primarily looking for areas where bats naturally funnel through. Like I said, lakes, waters, rivers and streams, are really a good spot for us to put up a mist net and capture a bat. Now, what this does is allows us to track really only a couple of individuals. Anything that may enter that site. So what we do when we capture those individuals, we'll band them. And this is a great example of why we should band them. Banding is a tool in which we use to track these individuals over time, assuming you can find them again. The bat here that has the reflective vest behind it, we just recently found this individual in a mine in Pierce county. It was originally banded in April of 1983. It's a male and it's roughly over 32 years old, assuming it was an adult. So these bats are very long lived species, and we found this particular bat at the same location for the last three years in a row. It hasn't learned that every year it seems get disturbed when you go in there and check its band, but it'll likely be hopefully there this next year and continue to set records on a Midwest level as far as oldest bat in the region for sure. We also monitor bats using small little transmitters. We'll capture a bat in a mist net, put a transmitter on and we can follow this individual for only five to seven days 'cause these transmitters are so small that the batteries don't last that long. So we have to get as much information as possible while we have that individual on there. What we can do, is we can start to identify where these bats are locating in the summer. What is important for them to raise their young. These were Northern Long-eared bats that we were tracking. We were finding them here, I don't know if you can see it in the loose bark, but there's an antenna sticking out of there. We're finding out where these bats are located and it's important so we can start to figure out where these bats are and how to protect these areas. Most of what we've talked about is really only been about tracking the individual. With the exception of maybe the winter surveillance, which really isn't citizen science friendly. The other possibility that we have. We have two citizen based projects. One of which is the bat roost project. This follows bat roosts throughout the summer. So like I said, there's two different species, Big Brown bat and Little Brown bat that will congregate in bat houses, and in attics and such. So we follow these bats. We've got a citizen science project that if you don't know of a roost we can pair you up with a known roost in your area. Or if you do know of a roost let us know, we want to be able to track that information. So what we do, is we ideally get a count in early June, so we can see all of the females that are arriving. Then we would like a count later in July so we can see maybe that reproductive status. So we can see the juveniles starting to fly at that point. There's only one qualification that you need for this particular project. Can you count? (laughing) I just asked my son the other day, "How high can you count?" and he said "109," without even hesitating. So I think he's pretty good, you guys are probably pretty good too. This, what this does is it helps us define where these large concentrations of bats occur. And what different species are throughout the state. As you can see, we know a lot about the southwest, but we're still trying figure out maybe some of these small parts. Some of the counties that we don't have any information from. What we can learn from this particular project is, you can see here that the graph, each point represents a time which somebody counted. Somebody went-- This was four years of data, this was a site in Door county, a little brown bat site, where they typically had anywhere from 600 to 800 Little Brown bats. They would go at distinct times and count the bats. And you can see here where the females start to show up right around May, early June and they're at their highest point, at that point. The females, the adults are. And then they give birth. They raise their young for three to four weeks, and then their young start to fly which is what you see that highest peak is. Well this lowest part of the graph actually was just this last year. So we expect that this bat colony was probably subjected to white-nose syndrome to some extent. So we're starting to see the declines already. So citizen science in an important tool, not only for us to kind of track this information, these colonies, but also on a real time basis. -

Voiceover

You're have about a minute. Oh, a minute. Okay. Well, no worries. So it's really important for us to continue to monitor these bat colonies. If you're at all interested we're having our second annual Great Wisconsin Bat Count where we're going to count on June 3rd to the 5th and then July 29th through the 31st. These are some of the counties, the white counties are the counties that we don't have any information from at this point. The other project that I have is the the Citizen Acoustic Monitoring Project, which utilizes acoustic detection systems. All bats in Wisconsin use echolocation. They're sending out pulses, listening for those pulses to return, and in doing so drawing a picture of a map that they have not only for navigating, but also for capturing insects. So we use equipment like this, and I don't know if I can play it right now, It's worth the time, but my fingers are producing ultrasound. This allows us to eavesdrop on bats as they're foraging and navigating the night sky. With that we can determine what species are flying and in what different areas. These are just some of the examples of the calls that you might be able to see in the real time view of a small computer we have. And this is just some of the examples of, somebody chose to look at this site, that's their GPS route, and those are the bat encounters that they had. Lakes, like I said, are really great areas. You can see these are all the bat encounter hits then you can figure out the species diversity based on that. And like I said, rivers are a great way to find bats. From the moment we put the detector on, from the moment we stop, lots of bats along the Mississippi river right along the Wyalusing. Sorry, just going through this really quick. But what this does, it allows us to figure out where certain bats are located through out the state. Before this effort at all in 2007, we had no idea where Eastern Pipistrelles were located. Now, through all these efforts, these are all acoustic surveys that were, the white ones are acoustic surveys that had been done from 2008 to 2011. And what we can do is now overlay where we just found Eastern Pipistrelles and we can define their range based on citizen science. So it's a really neat tool for us to be able to track bat populations but also engage the public and gain an appreciation for bats. I welcome any questions afterwords. You can send me e-mails. We're also available on the website which is right there. I'm sorry I had to speed through that. (audience applauding) Thank you.