Abstract
Diseases emerging from wildlife have been the source of many major human outbreaks. Predicting key sources of these outbreaks requires an understanding of the factors that explain pathogen diversity in reservoir species. Comparative methods are powerful tools for understanding variation in pathogen diversity and rely on correcting for phylogenetic relatedness among reservoir species. We reanalysed a previously published dataset, examining the relative effects of species' traits on patterns of viral diversity in bats and rodents. We expanded on prior work by using more highly resolved phylogenies for bats and rodents and incorporating a phylogenetically controlled principal components analysis. For rodents, sympatry and torpor use were important predictors of viral richness and, as previously reported, phylogeny had minimal impact in models. For bats, in contrast to prior work, we find that phylogeny does have an effect in models. Patterns of viral diversity in bats were related to geographical distribution (i.e. latitude and range size) and life history (i.e. lifespan, body size and birthing frequency). However, the effects of these predictors were marginal relative to citation count, emphasizing that the ability to accurately assess reservoir status largely depends on sampling effort and highlighting the need for additional data in future comparative studies.
Highlights
In recent years, viruses carried by wild mammals have caused a number of severe human outbreaks (e.g. severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) [1], Ebola [2], Rabies [3])
This is in contrast with Luis et al where the first three principal components accounted for 88% of the variance in bat life-history strategies and 93% of the variance in range area citations litters/year litter size mass sympatry IUCN NT IUCN V non-migratory regional migrant longevity bats all viruses zoonotic viruses (b) range area citations litters/year litter size mass sympatry latitude no torpor torpor longevity rodents all viruses zoonotic viruses
In our reanalysis of the data presented in Luis et al [21], we find that for both bats and rodents, when we controlled for phylogeny during preliminary data transformations, our first phylogenetic principal component explained the majority of life-history trait variation for bats, rodents and the bat/rodent combined data
Summary
Viruses carried by wild mammals have caused a number of severe human outbreaks (e.g. severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) [1], Ebola [2], Rabies [3]) Among groups of mammalian species capable of carrying zoonotic viruses, bats (order Chiroptera) receive substantial attention They act as reservoirs for pathogens such as, but not limited to, SARS, Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS), Nipah, Hendra, Marburg, Ebola and Rabies [5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. This body of work has sometimes yielded conflicting results about the importance of different ecological traits in driving patterns of viral diversity, it strongly indicates that bats are ‘special’: they host more viruses per species than most other major mammalian orders, including rodents [21,22]
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