Why are bats (chiroptera) a preferred host for so many zoonotic diseases? Some of their characteristics (food choices, colonial or solitary nature, population structure, ability to fly, seasonal migration and daily movement patterns, torpor and hibernation, life span, roosting behaviors, ability to echolocate, virus susceptibility, and so on) make them exquisitely suitable. Recent observations of outbreaks and epidemics of newly recognized human and livestock diseases caused by viruses transmitted by various megachiropteran and microchiropteran bats have drawn attention anew to these remarkable mammals. According to literature, 66 viruses have been isolated from bats.
Bats are abundant, diverse, and geographically widespread. These mammals provide us with resources, but their importance is minimized and many of their populations and species are at risk, even threatened or endangered. Whereas other mammals, such as rodents and carnivores, may possess traits in common with bats, such as the ability to hibernate, no group of mammals shares the full suite of attributes that make bats unique.
Bats evolved early and have changed relatively little in comparison with mammals of other taxa. Although the fossil record of bat evolution is incomplete, a recent analysis of 17 nuclear genes dated the origin of chiropterans to the Eocene period (52 to 50 million years ago), coincident with a significant rise in global temperature. The correspondingly ancient origins deduced for certain zoonotic viruses maintained in bats suggest a long history of co-speciation. Viruses that evolved with bats may have used for replication cellular receptors and biochemical pathways which are conserved in mammals that evolved later and which underwent radiation in later geological periods and, therefore, these conserved cellular receptors and pathways could enhance the capacity for transmission of bat-associated viruses to other mammals.
This story is from the April 10, 2020 edition of FRONTLINE.
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This story is from the April 10, 2020 edition of FRONTLINE.
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