Chapter 10 by Andrea Guinanzaca

Chapter 10 mainly focuses on bats. It starts off In 2007, in which a team of biologists decided to count the number of bats in Albany, New York. In the dead of winter, they climbed into caves with the expectation of seeing bats in hibernation. The next year, the scientists investigated the caves and again found freshly dead bats, covered in the same white substance. The bat die-off continued for years and spread to other states. Eventually, scientists learned that the white powder was a cold-loving fungus, Geomyces destructions, that is deadly to bats. In this part of the chapter, there a connection between Darwin’s theories and ideas. Darwin’s ideas help me understand the importance of the bat die-off. According to Darwin, he argued that, for all purposes, most animals cannot travel long distances. The idea of natural selection assumes the existence of isolated environments with natural barriers like mountains, oceans, rivers, etc. However, the problem with Darwin’s assumption is that many animals are capable of traveling long distances over natural barriers. Later, we learn in the Anthropocene, animals are dispersed around the world, thanks to the actions of human beings. Kolbert, who lives near the Albany bat caves, discovered that the lethal fungus had spread as far as West Virginia. Hicks, another mentioned scientist in his book, took Kolbert into the Adirondacks mountains where his team was conducting environmental tests.

We also learn that In the Anthropocene, species move around the world in a process similar to Russian roulette. When a species encounters a new environment, two things can happen: either nothing happens at all or the new environment kills the species. Most of the time, a species can’t adapt to a new environment. But when a species does, it reproduces and may sometimes spread to other surrounding environments. It’s not clear why some species are better at adapting than others but perhaps their success is as random as Russian roulette. However, scientists have hypothesized that when a species moves to a new environment it often has fewer evolutionary rivals and predators, and therefore its population explodes.

In conclusion, the white fungus that killed off bats in Albany is also an example of how dangerous a new pathogen can be. Meanwhile, the brown bat and a few other bat species have become endangered.