Welcome to "The AP Bat Project", Seth and Morgan search for bats infected with WNS, in Dunbar Cave.

Bats with White-nose Syndrome

Dr. Andrew N. Barrass, Associate Professor of Biology at APSU, is the Project Manager and Principal Investigator is working with The  Center of Excellence for Field Biology,  APSU, to monitor the potential spread of WNS (White-Nose Syndrome) in the state of Tennessee. Fellow researchers, Graduate students, Morgan Kurz, Seth McCormick, Veronica Mullen, Lindsay Brotherton, Josh Schulte, and Robert Arndt are studying bats using acoustic transect monitors at Dunbar Cave and Land Between The Lakes. The APSU research team is also developing a microscale GIS map of Dunbar Cave to help aid in the understanding of bat habitat usage of Cave chambers.  APSU is currently the only university asked by the State to monitor and develop research concerning the White Nose outbreak.

Program Manager & principal investigator at the Center for Field Biology:

Dunbar Cave

White Nose Syndrome Research in Dunbar Cave State Natural Area

Bat Project Students:

Seth McCormick and Morgan Kurz

In February 2006 some 40 miles west of Albany, N.Y., a caver photographed hibernating bats with an unusual white substance on their muzzles. He noticed  several dead bats. The following winter, bats behaving erratically, bats with white noses and a few hundred dead bats in several caves came to the attention of New York Department of Environmental Conservation biologists, who documented white-nose syndrome in January 2007. Hundreds of thousands of hibernating bats have died since. Biologists with state and federal agencies and organizations across the country are still trying to find the answer to this deadly mystery.

Bat Photography

- From US Fish & Wildlife Article