Biologist Jeffrey Foster at the ScienceWriters2011 conference in Flagstaff on October 16 discussed the implications to humans of the bat die-off resulting from the fungal disease called white nose syndrome. Steve Mirsky reports. “With the loss of these one two maybe 10 million bat individuals in these populations what are the implications?” Bats in the US are being plagued by a fungal condition called white nose syndrome. Northern Arizona University biologist Jeffrey Foster talked at the ScienceWriters2011 conference in Flagstaff on October 16th about what the loss of large numbers of bats would mean. “And certainly implications for ecosystem for ecosystem function particularly for forest health since these bats feed primarily on insects and the insects are a major part of these forests. Human health implications particularly with the vectors of particular diseases that we have out there. And then finally economic implications for agriculture…so there’s a recent estimate by Boyles et al of the economic impact of bats at nearly $23 billion. Clearly bats are very very important to agriculture in the United States.” —Steve Mirsky

在10月16日于 Flagstaff 召開的科學(xué)作家2011會議上，生物學(xué)家杰弗瑞•福斯特(Jeffrey Foster)討論了由一種真菌疾病引起的蝙蝠死亡給人類帶來的影響。

“蝙蝠種群中1百萬，2百萬，甚至可能是1千萬的個體消失，意味著什么？”

在美國，蝙蝠正被一種叫做白鼻病的真菌疾病所感染。在10月16日于 Flagstaff 召開的科學(xué)作家2011會議上，北亞利桑那大學(xué)的生物學(xué)家杰弗瑞•福斯特談?wù)摿舜罅框鸬南鶐淼挠绊憽?/P>

“首先，肯定對生態(tài)系統(tǒng)帶來影響，特別是影響到森林健康，因為蝙蝠的主要食物是昆蟲，而昆蟲是森林的主要組成部分；其次，對人類健康帶來影響，特別是對已有特殊疾病傳播媒介的影響。最后，是對農(nóng)業(yè)的經(jīng)濟(jì)影響。。?！币虼耍罱麭oyles et al作的一個評估顯示蝙蝠的經(jīng)濟(jì)影響接近230億美元。顯而易見，蝙蝠對美國農(nóng)業(yè)非常、非常重要。