DOI: 10.5061/dryad.ngf1vhhvv
title: Big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus) capture records before and after white-nose syndrome

description: We collated 30 years of big brown bat capture records collected between
 1990 to 2020. We collected data from wildlife agencies and researchers in
 the eastern US. We kept capture records that fell within the months of
 March through October, representing spring through fall months when bats
 are surveyed outside of hibernacula. We then paired this data with
 spatiotemporal spread of the fungal pathogen Pseudogymnoascus destructans
 (causal agent of white-nose syndrome that kills North American temperate
 bats), of which, big brown bats are susceptible to infection. The
 completed dataset represents 30,497 individual big brown bat captures
 across 3,797 unique sites.
description: We collated big brown bat capture records collected between March
 and October 1990–2020 from wildlife agencies and researchers in Georgia,
 Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,
 Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Virginia. We then paired this data with
 pathogen introduction and invasion information for
 <em>Pseudogymnoascus</em> <em>destructans</em>
 (fungal pathogen that causes white-nose syndrome and kills North American
 temperate bats). We used capture records that included
 date of capture, capture site name, sex (male/female), reproductive status
 (females only: non-reproductive/pregnant/lactating/post-lactating), age
 (adult/juvenile), mass (g) and forearm length (mm) at time of capture.
 Records that did not meet these minimal requirements were removed from the
 dataset. Site names were then masked due to the potential of exposing the
 location of sensitive species by labeling each site name by state and a
 unique identifier. We used data for adult big brown bat captures only. We
 also incorporated county of capture into the dataset. If county was
 provided, we used the reported county of capture. If latitude and
 longitude of capture were provided, we linked this point to the county
 level using the sp, maps and maptools packages in the statistical
 environment R. Once county was identified for each entry, we masked
 latitude and longitude to county by determining the latitude and longitude
 of the county centroid point using the housingData package in R.
 Into this dataset for big brown bat capture records, we added
 variables for the introduction and invasion of the bat fungal pathogen
 <em>Pseudogymnoascus</em>
 <em>destructans</em> (Pd). Year of Pd introduction was
 determined as the earliest year of confirmed or suspected Pd occurrence in
 each state using US Geological Survey data for Pd surveillance at
 whitenosesyndrome.org. We standardized Pd introduction across the dataset
 by subtracting the year of confirmed or suspected Pd occurence from the
 year of capture. Thus, the year of confirmed or suspected Pd occurrence in
 each state was at a baseline of '0', the number of years
 before Pd introduction were negative integers, and the number of years
 after Pd introduction were positive integers. We then created time-steps
 to represent groupings for disease exposure at the time of capture:
 pre-Pd invasion (&lt; 0 years), Pd invasion (0–1 years), Pd epidemic
 (2–4 years) and Pd establishment (5 + years).