University researchers studying vampire bats don’t fear for loss of blood.

Sonia Altizer, associate professor at the University School of Ecology, and Daniel Streicker, a doctoral student at the school of ecology, are researching rabies transmission among vampire bats in Peru.

The team hopes the research will lead to predicting, and eventually preventing, rabies outbreaks among cattle and humans.

Ph.D. student Daniel Streicker is studying vampire bats to learn about the transmission of rabies. He said the project will expand soon. Photo by DINA ZOLAN.

“There have been recent outbreaks of rabies in Peru,” Streicker said. “Vampire bats have started feeding on people, and that’s contributing to rabies spread.”

The team was recently awarded a $580,000 grant, allowing the group three more years to develop its research.

Altizer said the majority of their research focuses on how deforestation and increased human and cattle populations can cause vampire bat colonies to react.

“The expectation is that more cattle means more food for the bats, increasing their birth rate and overall numbers, and possibly increasing the transmission of rabies between the bats,” she said. “This is important because throughout Latin America, natural forests are being converted into rangelands for farming and livestock at a fast rate.”

Streicker said vampire bats tend to be opportunistic, meaning they will  likely feed on food sources that are most readily available.

Lack of cattle in villages can sometimes lead to outbreaks among humans, he said.

“In a city called Madre de Dios in northern Peru, we’ve been studying outbreaks of rabies,” he said. “We’ve found that they’ve been gold-mining there, and that involves a lot of deforestation.

“The deforestation is, of course, going to affect the natural wildlife in the area, and the people there are only coming in for gold-mining, so they’re not bringing in livestock. So the bats are turning to the people as a source of food.”

Though the team hopes their research will eventually lead to preventing rabies, Streicker said educational efforts can sometimes be difficult.

“We’ve been conducting surveys among people to see what they know about bats, whether they know you can contract rabies and what their experiences have been with bats,” he said. “Some people are putting down that you can get malaria, which you can’t get from bat bites. Another problem we’ve run into is in some areas, people are resistant to vaccination, because of religious reasons. They don’t trust the medicine.”

In Madre de Dios, Streicker said educating people about bat bites is near impossible. The gold-mining nature of the town leads to a high turnover of people.

“They’re only there for a few months or a year, and so it’s hard to push education,” he said.

Though the team’s research may be highly useful in Peru, Altizer said not many of the findings are applicable in Georgia.

However, she said some of the general ideas, such as how humans affect food sources and spread of disease, might be transferable.

“One analogy relates to supplemental feeding stations for wild birds,” she said. “When people put up bird feeders, does that cause the birds to aggregate in ways that increase the transmission of songbird diseases?”

Streicker said his team aims — with the help of the recently acquired grant — to expand the project and bring in more student researchers soon.

“Next spring we are going to be starting with a master’s student, but that’s a student from Peru that we’ve recruited for the master’s program at UGA,” he said. “It’s something I want to screen people for, though, because it can be harsh work. Often we’re working with bats and we stay up all night and don’t get a lot of sleep during the day. But it’s rewarding work and has a lot of useful applications.”