bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/614842; this version posted April 22, 2019. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. White-nose syndrome restructures bat skin microbiomes Meghan Ange-Stark1,*, Tina L. Cheng2,3, Joseph R. Hoyt4, Kate E. Langwig4, Katy L. Parise1,5, Winifred F. Frick2,3, A. Marm Kilpatrick2, Matthew D. MacManes1, Jeffrey T. Foster1,5 1 Department of Molecular, Cellular and Biomedical Sciences, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire, 03824, USA 2 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Santa Cruz, California 95064, USA 3 Bat Conservation International, Austin, Texas 78746, USA 4 Department of Biological Sciences, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061, USA 5 Pathogen and Microbiome Institute, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona 86011, USA *Corresponding author:
[email protected] Key words: bat populations, disease ecology, microbiome, Myotis lucifugus, Myotis septentrionalis, Perimyotis subflavus, Pseudogymnoascus destructans, white-nose syndrome bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/614842; this version posted April 22, 2019. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. Abstract The skin microbiome is an essential line of host defense against pathogens, yet our understanding of microbial communities and how they change when hosts become infected is limited. We investigated skin microbial composition in three North American bat species (Myotis lucifugus, Eptesicus fuscus, and Perimyotis subflavus) that have been impacted by the infectious disease, white-nose syndrome, caused by an invasive fungal pathogen, Pseudogymnoascus destructans.