Researchers race to study probiotic before white-nose syndrome spreads to B.C. bats

Researchers say a deadly fungus that has nearly wiped out a North American bat species hasn't yet spread to British Columbia, giving them valuable time to study whether probiotics prevent the disease.

B.C. scientists have been researching the bacteria-laden powder's effect on white-nose syndrome for the last three years.

The condition kills the bats by forcing them to wake from hibernating and use their energy to groom the fungus off their bodies.

Little brown myotis bats were once considered the most populous species of bats in North America. The disease has decimated them, and the species was declared endangered by the federal government in 2012, just six years after the first case of white-nose syndrome was documented on the continent.

The first bat in Washington state with the syndrome was discovered in 2016.

Cori Lausen, a biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society Canada, said experts have been expecting the disease to spread quickly across the west as it did further east, but that hasn't happened.

“As far as we know, it is contained to Washington and that is good news for our bats, and for our program, because we're trying to get out in front of the disease and use a preventive or prophylaxis approach, and that is where the probiotic comes in.”

B.C. bats often raise their young in maternity roosts in the summer and that's where researchers have been administering the probiotic since 2019.

Lausen said her team will be out spraying the probiotic at three Vancouver-based research sites this spring.