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Projecting the compound effects of climate change and white-nose syndrome on North American bat species

Climate change and disease are threats to biodiversity that may compound
and interact with one another in ways that are difficult to predict.
White-nose syndrome (WNS), caused by a cold-loving fungus
(Pseudogymnoascus destructans), has had devastating impacts on
North American hibernating bats, and impact severity has been linked to
hibernaculum microclimate conditions. As WNS spreads across the
continent and climate conditions change, anticipating these stressors’
combined impacts may improve conservation outcomes for bats. We build on
the recent development of winter species distribution models for five
North American bat species, which used a hybrid correlative-mechanistic
approach to integrate spatially explicit winter survivorship estimates
from a bioenergetic model of hibernation physiology. We apply this
bioenergetic model given the presence of P. destructans ,
including parameters capturing its climate-dependent growth as well as
its climate-dependent effects on host physiology, under both current
climate conditions and scenarios of future climate change. We then
update species distribution models with the resulting survivorship
estimates to predict changes in winter hibernacula suitability under
future conditions. Exposure to P. destructans is generally
projected to decrease bats’ winter occurrence probability, but in many
areas, changes in climate are projected to lessen the detrimental
impacts of WNS. This rescue effect is not predicted for all species or
geographies and may arrive too late to benefit many hibernacula.
However, our findings offer hope that proactive conservation strategies
to minimize other sources of mortality could allow bat populations
exposed to P. destructans to persist long enough for conditions
to improve.