Are the bats trying to tell us something?

I read an article about bats in the most recent University of Vermont alumnae magazine today. It made me want to cry.

Bats are dying due to a little-understood disorder called "White nose syndrome." The disorder causes the bats to wake frequently throughout their winter hibernation, and since they are hungry when they wake, they fly off in search of insects - their primary source of food. The problem is that in the winter, there are no insects, so the bats expend valuable energy in futile searches before returning to their winter slumbers. By the time they wake in the spring, the bats are so emaciated, that they are susceptible to other illnesses that healthy bats can easily fight off. So, the bats die from a variety of things, so it has been hard to pin-point the exact cause of the syndrome.

Researchers at the University of Vermont have been studying the bats in Vermont, trying to determine what is causing this disorder to decimate the bat populations across the country in a very short time period. Consider: the disorder was first identified in eastern New York state in 2006, and since that time has killed millions of bats in the Northeast US, rapidly spreading down the east coast, and towards the Midwest.

There have been articles in the local paper recently about the discovery of rabid bats in McHenry County, warning people to avoid coming into contact with bats in the event the bats are rabid. So, there may be those who think that bats are dangerous to people, so who cares if bats die?

Well, maybe we should care if all the bats die.

As one of the researchers comments in the article: the bats could be the canaries in the coal mine, perhaps giving us a warning about the general degredation of the environment that we all depend upon for life. Consider that frogs and toads are dying off at an alarming rate across the globe due to a fungus. And Colony Collapse Disorder is affecting bee populations across the US. With no known cause, the loss of bee populations has the potential to destroy the country's agriculture system, as bees are the primary pollinators for many crops!

Do we really want to take the chance that these dramatic die-offs of three unrelated groups of organisims are just a weird coincidence? Or are we prepared to heed the warnings and start making changes to clean up and improve the environment that we all depend upon for survival?

After all, the coal miners couldn't see or smell the invisible gas that killed the canary, but they knew enough to heed the warning that the dead bird gave them. Unlike the coal miners, we can't just move out of the mine into the clean air. We are living in the mine. Will we take the steps necessary to clean the air, water and soil around us before it's too late?

There are Fungus Among Us!

This is a blusher mushroom found June 24, 2010 in some woods north of Harvard. I'd never seen one of these in person -- only in photos.


It's a type of Amanita, which are usually poisonous, but this a non-deadly variety! While many mushrooms are quite safe (and good) to eat, there are quite a few that are either deadly poisonous resulting in near instant death, mildly toxic (causing gastric distress), and/or containing slow-acting toxins that may take several days to affect your vital organs and kill you.


So, it's never a good idea to eat a found mushroom unless you are absolutely sure you know what it is. But, just touching a poisonous mushroom won't kill anyone, so collecting them for identification is quite safe.

I was able to identify the blusher by looking at a combination of characteristics: cap color, presence of a "veil," stem size, shape & color, gill color, spore color and the location where the mushroom was found (in this case, on the ground in some oak woods). In this case, white spores and flesh bruising red were two of the keys. Another key was that the blusher is commonly found in oak woods.


If you look closely at the photo with the cut stem pieces turning red, you can see white spore prints on the piece of paper. Spore color is one of the key pieces of information needed to identify a mushroom, so I always try to get a spore print by separating the cap from the stem and placing it on a piece of white paper under a glass overnight. This increases the humidity around the mushroom which helps to release the spores.


Something else I learned about Amanitas today: there is a mold that attacks them and turns them into gnarly, solid things, as seen in the picture to the left. I cut the mushroom thing in half lengthwise, and was surprised to find that the stem and cap flesh seemed to be fused, and while there was a cap-like piece at the top of the mushroom, but there were no gills, and the exterior was covered in a hard crust.


I would never have guessed that there was a mold that attacked fungi! That's one of the things that keeps me interested in identifying mushrooms - there is always a new variety that I have never seen before, either because I'm in a different type of habitat, or its a different time of year.

Mulch Right

We had several very large branches removed from a couple of the old trees on our lot, and decided to keep the mulch for use around some of our trees.

This situation presents the opportunity for me to offer a short lesson in correct mulching.

Frankly, mulching ones trees properly is critical to the health of your trees -- or, perhaps I should say that incorrect mulching can kill trees.

Leaving the grass growing right up against the tree is problematic for many reasons, including:

- you risk mower damage to the trunk,

- if you fertilize or use herbicides on your lawn, you kill the beneficial soil organisms that the tree needs to take up nutrients from the soil, and

- you compact the root zone through continued traffic with a lawnmower.

Here are a few tips on mulching well:

1. NO MULCH VOLCANOES. Never, ever pile the mulch up in a hill around the trunk of the tree. This all-to-common mistake promotes root growth into the mulch, which weakens the tree. It also invites insects and rodents to feed on the smothered bark.

2. To keep weeds from growing up through the mulch, lay down several layers of newspapers in the area where the mulch will be placed. 6-10 layers of newspaper will smother the grass and weeds, but still allow water to soak into the ground, and permit the soil to breathe. The newspaper will break down over a year or so, and you will be left with a rich humus (organic soil) under the layer of mulch.

3. Pull grass and weeds out from the area next to the trunk before mulching. This step will save you work later, because sure enough, the first place weeds seem to show up is right next to the trunk -- unless you clear them out prior to laying down the newspaper and mulch.

4. The mulch should create a bowl of sorts -- thickest in the area furthest from the trunk. Think of the bowl as a way to ensure that water won't runn-off away from the tree, but will soak into the ground nearest to the trunk.

5. The mulched area should be at least three feet around the tree for oaks and hickories to protect the densest section of roots from compaction and disturbance. I have to admit that because of time, the mulch circle shown here extends only about 2 feet from the trunk.

After getting a good ring of protective mulch around the tree, then it is time for installing native plants under the rest of the tree's canopy! But that's a lesson for another day !!

Amphibians Under Threat

The April 2009 issue of National Geographic Magazine has an article about the dramatic, worldwide decline of amphibians (frogs and salamanders) due to a fungus that has been spreading rapidly over the last couple of decades.

The fungus, chytridiomycosis, targets the protein keratin which increases in frogs as they mature. So, a pond with the fungus may be teeming with tadpoles, but have no adult frogs. (And once those frogs mature, they will die too, and then the source of future tadpoles is gone...)

Even areas that are remote from civilization, like lakes high up in the Sierra mountains, have seen devastating die offs of frogs as the fungus has reached those seemingly isolated spots. The following quote seems to sum up the problem:

" 'Today's amphibians have taken not just a one-two punch, but a one-two-three-four punch. It's death by a thousand cuts,' says University of California, Berkeley, biol­ogist David Wake. Habitat destruc­tion, the introduction of exotic species, commercial exploitation, and water pollution are working in concert to decimate the world's amphibians."

Add to these other items the spread of the chytrid fungus, and the population of frogs and salamanders across the planet are in trouble. Hundreds of species have already gone extinct. Many other species are now found only in captivity, where scientists hope they can keep them around through breeding programs, and then reintroduce them to the wild once (if?) the situation with the fungus is resolved.

"Why care about frogs? 'I could give you a thousand reasons,' says herpetologist Luis Coloma. Because their skin acts not only as a protective barrier but also as a lung and a kidney, they can provide an early warning of pollutants. Their insect prey carries human pathogens, so frogs are an ally against disease. They serve as food for snakes, birds, even humans, playing a key role in both freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems. 'There are places where the biomass of amphibians was once higher than all other vertebrates combined,' says David Wake. 'How can you take that out of the ecosystem without changing it in a major way? There will be ecological consequences that we haven't yet grasped.' "

It all goes back to Aldo Leopold's rule about intelligent tinkering: be sure you keep all the parts.

For a quick slide show of frogs from around the world, click here!