Meeting Abstract

48.6  Thursday, Jan. 6  The Relationship between Dietary Fatty Acids and WNS Susceptibility in Bats FRANK, CRAIG*; BRIGHAM, R. MARK; HICKS, ALAN; KUNZ, THOMAS; RUDD, ROBERT; REICHARD, JONATHAN; Fordham Univ.; Univ. of Regina; NY D.E.C.; Boston Univ.; NY D.O.H.; Boston Univ. frank@fordham.edu

Mortality during white-nose syndrome (WNS) is due to the depletion of depot fat before spring, caused by reduced torpor bout lengths. The cause of abnormal hibernation in WNS bat populations is unknown. Studies on rodents demonstrated that moderately high levels of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) are required in the diet for hibernation. PUFAs cannot be synthesized by mammals, but accumulate in body lipids when present in the diet. We thus predicted that the fall diets of bat species not susceptible to WNS have relatively higher levels of PUFAs than those of species that are susceptible to WNS. We also predicted that the fall diets of bat populations where WNS does not occur have relatively higher PUFA contents than that of populations where WNS occurs. We tested these hypotheses by analyzing white adipose tissues from: a) Myotis lucifugus collected from different hibernation sites, and, b) Eptesicus fuscus, a species not strongly affected by WNS. The fall diets of E. fuscus contain significantly more linoleic acid than those of M. lucifugus with WNS collected from the same mine. Our analyses also revealed that M. lucifugus populations prone to WNS have significantly less alpha-linolenic acid in their fall diets than those where WNS does not occur. Our findings thus support the hypotheses that: a) bat species not susceptible to WNS have fall diets containing relatively higher levels of PUFAs than those of species feeding in the same area that are susceptible to WNS, and, b) bat populations not suffering from WNS have higher levels of PUFAs in their fall diets than those with WNS.