Dr. Craig Willis
UWinnipeg’s resident batman and biologist Dr. Craig Willis, along with his two UWinnipeg
Post-Doctoral Fellows, Dr. Lisa Warnecke and Dr. James Turner, have been receiving
international attention for their important breakthrough on white-nose syndrome (WNS) in
bats. Their findings, first published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences (PNAS), sheds important new light on how WNS has killed millions of
bats in North America since 2006. It also indicates that Geomyces desctructans, the
fungal pathogen responsible for the disease, is an invasive species from Europe. Media
from around the world have featured Dr. Willis’s work.
Although the fungus has been shown to spread by direct contact between bats and trigger
certain symptoms of the disease, its causal role in mortality from the epidemic has
remained established. Its origin has also been a mystery, although bats in Europe also
carry the fungus but without mass mortality.
GOT BUGS? GET BATS & HELP!
If you want to help UWinnipeg’s Batman, biologist Dr. Craig Willis, with his important bat
research:
Get bats! Currently our best defense against WNS is protecting and enhancing summer
roosting habitat for bats to ensure their populations are as healthy as possible before the
disease arrives. You can help by putting up a “bat house” like the ones found at
www.braecrest.com
If you have bats roosting in your home, cottage, or bat house, you can also help by participating in UWinnipeg’s “Manitoba Bat Blitz.” For more information visit www.willisbatlab.org/bat-blitz.html