Researchers trying not to accidentally infect bats with COVID
WATERLOO REGION - Bat populations were already plummeting, but the pandemic is adding another layer of concern.
Bat researchers are taking extra precautions to ensure they don't accidentally infect the bats they are handling with SARS-CoV-2.
It's a bit of an open question as to whether the bats that we have in North America are susceptible to COVID-19 or not, but just to be extra sure we want to make sure that we don't risk that," says Liam McGuire, an associate professor in biology at the University of Waterloo.
In some ways it has made conducting research a little more challenging because we want to be extra careful that we don't have a reverse spillover. We want to make sure that we don't give COVID to the bats."
McGuire is planning field work near Renfrew, west of Ottawa, this fall to study how bats may prepare differently for hibernation than they did 15 years ago before white nose syndrome, a disease caused by a fungus that has devastated bat populations, took hold in North America.
His team will follow guidelines given by the International Union for Conservation of Nature on bat handling, which includes only doing essential bat research or finding ways to do research without interacting with bats.
For essential contact with bats, McGuire and his team will take extra precautions.
Basically we treat the bats the same as you would treat another human," he says.
This includes wearing protective equipment like masks and gloves, having people be vaccinated wherever possible and changing gloves, sanitizing and cleaning all equipment between animals.
Once he gets the green light from the university regarding safety, McGuire and his team will be heading to a large abandoned mine near Renfrew in Eastern Ontario. This is the busiest known hibernation site for bats in the province, he says.
Before white nose syndrome took hold in North America and decimated bat populations, between 20 and 30,000 bats hibernated in this mine. Today, McGuire estimates there may be 2,000.
His team will be studying how the remaining bats prepare for hibernation in the fall, to see if they do anything differently such as foraging longer or putting on more fat than they did 15 years ago.
Bats rely on their fat stores to survive the winter while they hibernate. White nose syndrome causes them to use up their fat stores too early so bats with higher fat stores have a higher chance of survival.
If Renfrew's surviving bats put on more weight than others, it's one possible reason why some small pockets of bats seem to be able to survive white nose syndrome and researchers want to know what makes these bats different.
Seven out of Ontario's eight bat species are listed as endangered or undergoing assessment for listing. Three bat species have suffered 90 per cent population losses. Whether it's white nose syndrome or wind turbines, bats are having a tough time.
COVID is not helping. McGuire spoke about how the pandemic has impacted popular perception of bats.
As you can imagine not everybody thought of bats very often to begin with or when they did, they're not always thought of in the most positive light," he said. So bats had a bit of an image problem to begin with and then now when there are connections that people are making between bats and diseases and that sort of thing, it would seem to further complicate that.
What we think we know, is that it's more than likely that the COVID-19 virus, SARS-CoV-2, probably originated in a bat population. We don't know how it got from bats to humans. There is a good chance that it came through a secondary species so it may have gone from bats to another species of wildlife and then in to humans. That we don't entirely know."
McGuire says bats are known as a reservoir species for some diseases, but so are many other animals such as mice. However, many high-profile diseases are associated with bats. McGuire says research around the world is ongoing to understand why bats are known to carry diseases without actually becoming sick themselves.
What we do know, says McGuire, is that incidents of these kind of diseases spreading to humans seems to be increasing as humans increasingly encroach on wild spaces.
We're affecting the landscape. We're cutting down forest, we're expanding cities and humans are increasingly moving into natural areas and increasing the rate of contact between humans and wildlife that didn't used to be as common.
Bats we know carry a variety of viruses, but it had never really been a problem until humans started messing up the ecosystem. So now we're starting to see more of these issues because we're increasingly encroaching upon natural spaces."
Leah Gerber is a Waterloo Region-based general assignment reporter for The Record. Reach her via lgerber@therecord.com