Dale Manning, Anya Nakhmurina, Eli Fenichel
Most Americans tend to think about bats only around Halloween, but the U.S. economy benefits from these furry flying mammals every day.
Bats pollinate plants, including many important food crops, when they stop by flowers to drink nectar. Their guano is mined from caves for fertilizer. And they eat a lot of bugs – the kinds that bother people (think mosquitoes) and others that destroy crops that humans depend on for food.
Sadly, bat populations are declining rapidly in North America. A driving force is a fungal disease known as white-nose syndrome, which has spread among bats throughout the United States. When a bat population crashes, fewer bats are around to eat bothersome insects. All those additional insects can do serious damage.
So, when bats disappear, farms become less productive, and that has broad implications for the agricultural economy, human health, rural governments and even financial markets.