Conservation genetics and infectious disease in Brandt's bats

Myotis bats are a highly speciose group, which make them attractive systems to study genetic diversiy and comparative genomics. This study will focus on an unusual system where one species in Europe, Brandt's bats, are recent colonists derived from a North American species, little brown bats. Brandt's bats, appear to have adapted to tolerate infection by a pathogenic fungus found widely in European roosts. This fungus has recently spread to North America causing devastating losses in little brown bats. Here we will examine genetic diversity and the resilience of bat species to novel infectious disease, particularly given range-shifts expected following climate change.