Tracking Parasites in Little Brown Bats: A Study in Host Health and Disease Ecology

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Interdisciplinary Centers, Units and Projects::Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships (CURF)::Fall Research Expo
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Biology
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Little Brown Bats
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2025-08-26
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Wimmer, Liam
Morucci, Katherine
Brisson, Dustin
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Abstract

Little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) play a critical role in North American ecosystems as insectivores, yet their populations have been declining due to multiple stressors related to parasites and pathogens. Parasites are an often-overlooked component of bat health, despite their high potential to influence host survival. This project aims to investigate the diversity of parasites associated with little brown bats, with a particular focus on their guano. Understanding these host-parasite interactions is important for assessing bat health and evaluating broader implications for wildlife conservation and zoonotic disease transmission. To address this, we visited a number of bat roosting sites in order to collect their guano. Using collected guano, we utilized floatation and sedimentation techniques in order to separate any parasites that might be in the guano from excess material. The sedimentation technique proved to be more effective in helping us find parasites in the bat guano. Both of these methods involved repeated centrifuging and draining techniques. Since this project is relatively new, we didn’t get to quantify the actual number and type of parasites among the different guano locations, but we hope to use that data in the future to do so. We also did bat counts among five bat boxes across a three-day period to see if there was any significant roost-switching behavior among the bats. There did seem to be a good amount of roost-switching, and we hope to investigate this further to determine if it relates to pathogen prevalence. The idea is that if there is more disease in a bat box, then bats might be able to sense that and leave for another bat box to avoid catching any diseases. In conclusion, much more research must be done to report any significant findings regarding parasite prevalence and roost-switching behavior. Any further findings would be beneficial to the little brown bat population and, in turn, to the human population. These findings would benefit the human population, as bats are known to carry a number of diseases that can be transmitted to humans. Overall, with more time and effort, we hope to track little brown bat movement and begin relating their roost-switching behavior to pathogen/parasite prevalence.

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2025-09-15
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This project was supported by the Penn Undergraduate Research Mentoring (PURM) program.
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