Newton Researcher Receives $90K Grant To Study Sick Bats

NEWTON, MA — A Lesley University biology instructor has received a $90,000 U.S. Fish and Wildlife grant to study sick bats.

Christopher Richardson, a Newton resident, will use the funding to study the continued effects of white-nose syndrome, a disease that has killed millions of bats since it was first discovered in 2007, to learn how well colonies of little brown bats are recovering from the disease. He will do this by examining their excrement.

“Animal droppings have very valuable information,” said Richardson in a statement.

Although not glamorous, the work stands to provide invaluable data on bat populations that have been devastated by white-nose syndrome and give clues into what resources recovering colonies may need.

So far, there is no cure for white-nose syndrome, a disease caused by a fungus that leaves a white powder on bats’ noses. In some cases, entire colonies have died, but others are rebounding.

For the grant, Richardson is teaming up with Harvard University, MIT's Broad Institute, which does genomic sequencing, and bat researchers from Tulane University and the University of Las Vegas to examine the top indicators that show if and how quickly a bat population will rebound from white-nose syndrome.

Richardson will evaluate cortisol, the stress hormone, as well as inflammation and coronavirus strains that can be detected in bat poop and may correlate with the mammals’ ability to fight off the fungus.

In addition to preserving mosquito-eating bats, the data could help humans in a similar way that studying different diseases in mice does.

“There could be some insight from studying a bat model for understanding humans, too,” said Richardson.

The grant begins in May 2022 and will last two years.