 One of the most abundant bat species in eastern North America, the little brown bat ("Myotis lucifugus"), could disappear from this region within 16 years.Severely infected bats emerge prematurely from hibernation, and if they survive long enough and enter a different hibernaculum, the likelihood of transmission is probably high, because they presumably carry a large load of fungal spores.Transmission of the infection is either physically from bat-to-bat contact, or from and hibernaculum-to-bat, through the exposure to spores of "Geomyces- destructans" that were present on a roosting substrate.