Long-term spring through fall capture data of in the eastern USA before and after white-nose syndrome.

Emerging infectious diseases threaten wildlife populations. Without well monitored wildlife systems, it is challenging to determine accurate population and ecosystem losses following disease emergence. North American temperate bats present a unique opportunity for studying the broad impacts of wildlife disease emergence, as their federal monitoring programs were prioritized in the USA throughout the 20 century and they are currently threatened by the invasive fungal pathogen, (), which causes white-nose syndrome. Here we provide a long-term dataset for capture records of (big brown bat) across the eastern USA, spanning 16 years before and 14 years after invasion into North America. These data represent 30,496 captures across 3,567 unique sites. We encourage the use of this dataset for quantifying impacts of wildlife disease and other threats to wildlife (e.g., climate change) with the incorporation of other available data. We welcome additional data contributions for captures across North and Central America as well as the inclusion of other variables into the dataset that contribute to the quantification of wildlife health.