Emerging Infectious Diseases explores fungal infections
In an article about the July 2023 cover of Emerging Infectious Diseases, Bryan Breedlove describes the vital role bats play vital role in maintaining healthy ecosystems. As managing senior editor of the journal, Breedlove writes that bats devour large amounts of insect pests; pollinate hundreds of species of fruit, including avocados, bananas, and mangoes; and spread seeds of a number of plants, including cacao, figs, and nuts.
He provides details about the July cover image, Bat in Moon by Biho Takashi, which portrays a soaring bat silhouetted across a full moon. A fitting caption can be taken from Ariel’s words in Act V, Scene I, of The Tempest by William Shakespeare: “On the bat’s back I do fly after summer merrily.”
Breedlove writes that little is known about the artist Biho Takashi. Even his actual name cannot be verified. Woodblocks attributed to Takahashi Bihō or Hirose Bihō bear signatures identical to his. The Five Colleges and Historic Deerfield Museum Consortium in western Massachusetts offers that Biho “was a designer of kachō-e, or ‘animal and flower pictures’ and that he used a gradient effect known as bokashi in many of his works.”
During the past two decades across North America, bat populations have been declining precipitously because of Pseudogymnoascus destructans, commonly known as white-nose syndrome fungus. Bats infected with this emerging fungus were first detected in the United States in 2006 in a cave frequented by tourists near Albany, New York. Veterinary pathologist Lisa Farina and wildlife pathologist Julie Lankton have stated that an estimated 6 million bats died from this infection within a decade after its discovery and that it “may represent the largest mammalian wildlife mortality event in recorded history.”
Read more about the cover and view the article from Breedlove on the journal's website.
Breedlove B. “On the Bat’s Back I Do Fly after Summer Merrily.” Emerging Infectious Diseases. 2023;29(7):1499-1501. doi:10.3201/eid2907.ac2907.
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