Understanding where bats spend the winter and the environmental conditions in their winter roosts is critical to monitoring white-nose syndrome. White-nose syndrome is a fungal disease that kills hibernating bats by causing them to burn through their energy reserves too quickly, dying of either starvation or exposure when they leave their hibernacula during winter to search for food. Given the potential impacts of white-nose on bat populations in Wyoming, we are using a combination of radio-tracking and winter acoustic surveys to better understand habitat use of Wyoming bats during this critical time of year.

During the winter, Game and Fish swabs bats in known winter roosts to look for the fungus that causes white-nose syndrome, Pseudogymnoascus destructans, or Pd for short. The bats will clear the fungus after hibernation if they survive, but it's still possible to detect Pd for a few months following spring emergence. So, in the early spring we sample bats on the landscape to look for the fungus as well.

Pd was detected for the first time in Wyoming in May 2018 in Goshen County by researchers with the Wyoming Natural Diversity Database. White-nose has impacted bat populations in the eastern United States, with mortality as high as 99 percent at some large winter roosts. Large hibernacula are less well known in Wyoming and the West in general, but there is evidence that bats may hibernate in non-cavernous rocky habitat such as cracks in rocks or talus slopes which could have implications for how quickly Pd spreads in Wyoming's bat populations.