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 召开的科学作家2011会议上，生物学家杰弗瑞•福斯特(Jeffrey Foster)讨论了由一种真菌疾病引起的蝙蝠死亡给人类带来的影响。

“蝙蝠种群中1百万，2百万，甚至可能是1千万的个体消失，意味着什么？”

在美国，蝙蝠正被一种叫做白鼻病的真菌疾病所感染。在10月16日于 Flagstaff 召开的科学作家2011会议上，北亚利桑那大学的生物学家杰弗瑞•福斯特谈论了大量蝙蝠的消失所带来的影响。

“首先，肯定对生态系统带来影响，特别是影响到森林健康，因为蝙蝠的主要食物是昆虫，而昆虫是森林的主要组成部分；其次，对人类健康带来影响，特别是对已有特殊疾病传播媒介的影响。最后，是对农业的经济影响。。。”因此，最近Boyles et al作的一个评估显示蝙蝠的经济影响接近230亿美元。显而易见，蝙蝠对美国农业非常、非常重要。