Heated box placed in hibernation caves might help bats afflicted with a mysterious and deadly disorder called “white-nose syndrome,” researchers wrote in an article published online Thursday in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

“White-nose syndrome” has killed upward of a half million bats in three winters from New England to West Virginia. The disorder was named so for the white smudges of fungus on the noses and wings of hibernating bats.

The bats affected by “white-nose syndrome” awake from their hibernation during the winter time, when their normal food – insects – is not available, which makes them vulnerable to death. They have to raise their body temperature, which depletes their energy stores, making it difficult for them to make it through the winter.

But, heated boxes placed in caves where bats are hibernating could reduce deaths by about 75 percent, Graduate student Justin G. Boyles of Indiana State University and biologist Craig K. R. Willis of Canada's University of Winnipeg believe.

These heated boxes would be powered by car batteries liked to solar cells and would not disturb the cave environment. They would raise the surrounding air temperature, making bats to burn fewer calories to warm back up.

"It would be sort of a stopgap measure," said Willis, a biology professor at the University of Winnipeg.

The researchers have already built prototypes and “hope to have them in caves in the next couple of weeks.” The boxes will be tested in unaffected caves in Manitoba, Canada.  The pilot study is funded with a $28,000 grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.