In places where bat populations have collapsed in the US, infant mortality has gone up. A new study by economist Eyal Frank, appearing in the journal Science, explains the connection.
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In places where bat populations have collapsed in the US, infant mortality has gone up. A new study by economist Eyal Frank, appearing in the journal Science, explains the connection.
When a cold snap brought freezing temperatures into Texas last week, Mary Warwick, the Houston Humane Society’s director of wildlife, drove over to the Waugh Drive Bridge to check on the resident bat colony. She found 138 cold-stunned bats under the bridge, victims of hypothermic shock.
The winner was the stuff of nightmares: a parasitic fungus erupting from the body of a fly. Evolutionary biologist Roberto García-Roa captured the moment when “spores of the so-called ‘Zombie’ fungus infect arthropods by infiltrating their exoskeleton and minds. … Here, they await death, at which point the fungus feeds on its host to produce fruiting bodies full of spores that will be jettisoned to infect more victims—a conquest shaped by thousands of years of evolution.”
