by: Marissa Beachell, Stephen Kulka, Mackenzie Lachkey, & Katherine O’Malley (Stonehill College, BIO 323 Evolution, Spring 2018)

There isn’t much worse than walking in after a night spent outside in the summertime and seeing your arms and legs covered in mosquito bites! While not every species or type of mosquito needs to bite to obtain food, many species do get their nutrients from a blood meal. What if there were a way that we could never get bitten by mosquitoes again but the mosquitoes actually live… and even thrive? We spend so much time and money on mosquito repellents and tiki torches that supposedly ward off these pests, while those in some other parts of the world set up mosquito nets to avoid a bite. It’s easy to brush off a few mosquito bites in Massachusetts or another urban area of the U.S., but for those countries with preventative mosquito nets, a bite could mean life or death. This whole landscape could be changing, however, as recent scientific research has illuminated a possible solution in which humans and mosquitoes both win.

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This time Batman needs help … with whitenose syndrome

by: Junior Andrade, Azariah Boyd, Kasey Dietzman, Zachary Fanara (Stonehill College Evolution Fall 2017)

Many people forget that bats are not just there for inspiring big-name superheroes. Bats play a critical role in pollination of many commercial products throughout the world such as bananas and peaches just to name a few. Bats also play an essential role in crop growth by maintaining the populations of common pests. However, bats in North America are in a time of crisis and it all began with fungus. Pseudogymnoascus destructans (P. destructans), a cold loving fungus, is able to grow in hibernating bats when their bodies reach a temperature of 39 to 68 degrees. This fungus grows and makes the bats ill and spiked a recent decline in North American bats. The disease was named White-nose syndrome due to the fungal growth resulting in white substance on the muzzle of the bats. White-nose syndrome has specifically hurt the North American little brown myotis bat which has been driven to the endangered species list in under ten years due to the syndrome.

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