Summary
Bats were translocated between two hibernacula with persisting colonies as well as to one hibernaculum previously extirpated of bats by WNS (Fig. 1). Bats were caged within each site, where they remained for the duration of winter, allowing us to quantify disease severity from the same individuals at both the beginning and end of hibernation. In all three sites, survival observed during the translocation experiment was higher than that observed within the same sites during the initial epidemic. This suggests little brown bats in persisting colonies have unique host traits that promote surviving infection with P. destructans . However, disease severity and subsequently survival varied across the three hibernacula, suggesting environmental conditions interact with host traits to ultimately drive persistence.