Bat Maternity Roost Microclimate Monitoring

(l to r) Ethan Toczko and Brian Blais (CT DEEP, Wildlife Division)
download data collected by datalogger.  

The datalogger is located in rafters of White Memorial's Green Barn
 and collects temperature and relative humidity reading periodically.  

Ethan Toczko and Brian Blais (CT DEEP, Wildlife Diversity Unit Technicians) downloaded some information that has been steadily collected for the past summer season.  Jenny Dickson (CT DEEP, Supervising Wildlife Biologist) is studying the microclimate of Big Brown Bat maternity roosts and associating this information with prevalence of White Nose Syndrome.  White Nose Syndrome (WNS) is an emerging infectious disease that kills bats primarily during the winter season while they are hibernating but has been observed in young animals who are dispersing from the roosts where they were born.  Recently, the disease causing agent was verified as a fungus that is native to Europe and brought to North America.  This invasive species has caused as much as 90% of the bats to die each year while hibernating in Connecticut's underground cave-like structures.  Fortunately, Big Brown Bats are the only hibernating bat species in CT not experiencing this level of mortality but some animals do die from WNS each year.  The datalogger is located in the rafters of White Memorial's Green Barn and collects temperature and relative humidity readings.  Although the data is collected continuously and culminates in thousands of data points, we only have to pull out our tallest extension ladder to download the data once a year!  Finally, technology that creates less work!