Our understanding of bat viral ecology has increased substantially over the past two decades, yet this knowledge remains limited to a handful of species and the extremely diverse ecology, biology and life history traits of bats pose a challenge when extrapolating data from any one species or population to bats more broadly. In this Review, we discuss the current state and knowledge gaps of bat virus ecology (Box 1) and the molecular barriers to zoonotic disease emergence we also review advances and challenges in pandemic preparedness and provide a framework for addressing critical deficits in our understanding of bat-borne viruses. Further hampering this effort is an incomplete understanding of the animals themselves, their distributions, behaviours and interactions with the environment, and the processes that lead to contact with humans. However, as most of these sequences span polymerases and not the surface proteins that often govern cellular entry, little progress has been made towards translating sequence data from novel viruses into a risk-based assessment to quantify zoonotic potential and elicit public health action. These efforts, ultimately aimed at identifying and mitigating future emergence events of bat-borne diseases, have identified thousands of novel bat-derived viral genomic sequences over the past decade. This viral diversity flags bats as an important taxonomic group for global viral discovery and zoonotic disease surveillance efforts 9. A growing list of emergent coronaviruses, including the Swine acute diarrhoea syndrome coronavirus, which emerged from horseshoe bats and killed >20,000 pigs 6, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic 7, further underscores the ongoing threat of bat-borne viral emergence.īats harbour a high viral diversity relative to other mammalian orders indeed, recent studies have suggested that viral diversity is reflective of the number of species, with Rodentia (rodents) and Chiroptera (bats) containing the most species among mammals 8. In addition to direct isolation of these human pathogens from bats, accumulating evidence suggests that other emerging viruses, such as Ebola viruses, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV), SARS-CoV-2 and Middle East respiratory coronavirus (MERS-CoV), also originated in bats, even if other hosts, such as civets for SARS-CoV and camels for MERS-CoV, are proximate reservoirs for human infection 2, 3, 4, 5. Bats have been identified as natural reservoir hosts for several emerging viruses that can induce severe disease in humans, including RNA viruses such as Marburg virus, Hendra virus, Sosuga virus and Nipah virus. Bats are the second most diverse mammalian order on Earth after rodents, comprising approximately 22% of all named mammal species, and are resident on every continent except Antarctica 1.
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