Abstract
Australia’s 81 bat species play vital ecological and economic roles via suppression of insect pests and maintenance of native forests through pollination and seed dispersal. Bats also host a wide diversity of coronaviruses globally, including several viral species that are closely related to SARS-CoV-2 and other emergent human respiratory coronaviruses. Although there are hundreds of studies of bat coronaviruses globally, there are only three studies of bat coronaviruses in Australian bat species, and no systematic studies of drivers of shedding. These limited studies have identified two betacoronaviruses and seven alphacoronaviruses, but less than half of Australian species are included in these studies and further research is therefore needed. There is no current evidence of spillover of coronaviruses from bats to humans in Australia, either directly or indirectly via intermediate hosts. The limited available data are inadequate to determine whether this lack of evidence indicates that spillover does not occur or occurs but is undetected. Conversely, multiple international agencies have flagged the potential transmission of human coronaviruses (including SARS CoV-2) from humans to bats, and the consequent threat to bat conservation and human health. Australia has a long history of bat research across a broad range of ecological and associated disciplines, as well as expertise in viral spillover from bats. This strong foundation is an ideal platform for developing integrative approaches to understanding bat health and sustainable protection of human health.
Highlights
The global COVID-19 pandemic resulting from the emergence of a novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-CoV-2 in late 2019 (Zhu et al 2020) has refocussed attention on coronaviruses of bat origin
Bats host a wide diversity of coronaviruses (Cui et al 2007; Vijaykrishna et al 2007; Drexler et al 2014; Anthony et al 2017a; Lacroix et al 2017; Wong et al 2019; Latinne et al 2020), including viral species linked to emergent human respiratory syndrome coronaviruses (Cui et al 2019)
The epidemiological link between early COVID-19 cases and a Wuhan wet market (Chen et al 2020; Li et al 2020) led to an initial hypothesis that transmission from bats and recombination in an unknown intermediate host sold in the market might be involved (Zhang et al 2020); the links to intermediate hosts are unclear (Boni et al 2020), and it is possible that the market was the site of a superspreading event after the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 elsewhere
Summary
The global COVID-19 pandemic resulting from the emergence of a novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 in late 2019 (Zhu et al 2020) has refocussed attention on coronaviruses of bat origin. It is important to note that sampling efforts are not globally uniform, and such absences may not necessarily represent true diversity and abundance of circulating coronaviruses (Anthony et al 2017a) This may affect analyses that indicate that the number of coronavirus species detected per bat family varies by continent in Africa and Asia (with high rates of detection in Pteropodidae in Africa; high rates of detection in Miniopteridae, Vespertilionidae and Pteropodidae in Asia), but bat family did not influence rate of detection in Latin America (Anthony et al 2017a)
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