Knowledge, perceptions, and attitudes by residents in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan in connection with bats.

BACKGROUND: Fruit bats play an important role in pollination and seed dispersal, and their conservation is important to maintain the productivity of some crops and natural ecosystems. The objective of this study was to investigate the knowledge, attitudes, and perception of fruit bats by orchard farmers and agricultural communities in Pakistan. METHODS: The present survey was conducted in two districts (i.e. Sheikhupura and Malakand districts) within Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces based on the higher number of fruit growing areas and bat roosting sites. A total of 200 (100 per district) close-ended questionnaires with 53 questions were administered to randomly selected respondents within the selected communities associated with fruit orchards, including orchard owners, laborers, and members of the surrounding community. Each questionnaire was divided into seven sections (i.e., demographic information, environmental and public health effects of bats, knowledge about bats, perception and control of bats, non-lethal methods adopted to control bats, and different myths about bats). RESULTS: A majority of respondents (59%, n = 118) mis-classified bats as birds instead of mammals despite more than 84% reporting that they have observed bats. Nearly 71.5% of orchard farmers perceived that their fruits are contaminated by bats during consumption, and a majority believe that bats destroy orchards (62.5%) and are responsible for spreading disease. Mythology about bats was ambiguous, as 49% of those surveyed did not perceived bats to bring good luck (49%), and 50% did not perceived them to be bad omens either. Most respondents have never killed a bat (68%) nor would they kill a bat if given the opportunity (95%). Regarding the control of bats, the greatest percentage of respondents strongly disagree with shooting bats (36%) and strongly agree with leaving bats alone (42.5%). CONCLUSIONS: This study provides a better understanding of the sociodemographic factors associated with knowledge, attitude and perception of bats from fruit orchard owners, labourers and local people. We recommend educational interventions for targeted groups in the community, highlighting the ecosystem services and importance of bat conservation to improve people's current knowledge regarding the role of bats and reduce direct persecution against bats.

Holistic understanding of contemporary ecosystems requires integration of data on domesticated, captive and cultivated organisms.

Domestic and captive animals and cultivated plants should be recognised as integral components in contemporary ecosystems. They interact with wild organisms through such mechanisms as hybridization, predation, herbivory, competition and disease transmission and, in many cases, define ecosystem properties. Nevertheless, it is widespread practice for data on domestic, captive and cultivated organisms to be excluded from biodiversity repositories, such as natural history collections. Furthermore, there is a lack of integration of data collected about biodiversity in disciplines, such as agriculture, veterinary science, epidemiology and invasion science. Discipline-specific data are often intentionally excluded from integrative databases in order to maintain the "purity" of data on natural processes. Rather than being beneficial, we argue that this practise of data exclusivity greatly limits the utility of discipline-specific data for applications ranging from agricultural pest management to invasion biology, infectious disease prevention and community ecology. This problem can be resolved by data providers using standards to indicate whether the observed organism is of wild or domestic origin and by integrating their data with other biodiversity data (e.g. in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility). Doing so will enable efforts to integrate the full panorama of biodiversity knowledge across related disciplines to tackle pressing societal questions.

Preserve a Voucher Specimen! The Critical Need for Integrating Natural History Collections in Infectious Disease Studies.

Despite being nearly 10 months into the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic, the definitive animal host for SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2), the causal agent of COVID-19, remains unknown. Unfortunately, similar problems exist for other betacoronaviruses, and no vouchered specimens exist to corroborate host species identification for most of these pathogens. This most basic information is critical to the full understanding and mitigation of emerging zoonotic diseases. To overcome this hurdle, we recommend that host-pathogen researchers adopt vouchering practices and collaborate with natural history collections to permanently archive microbiological samples and host specimens. Vouchered specimens and associated samples provide both repeatability and extension to host-pathogen studies, and using them mobilizes a large workforce (i.e., biodiversity scientists) to assist in pandemic preparedness. We review several well-known examples that successfully integrate host-pathogen research with natural history collections (e.g., yellow fever, hantaviruses, helminths). However, vouchering remains an underutilized practice in such studies. Using an online survey, we assessed vouchering practices used by microbiologists (e.g., bacteriologists, parasitologists, virologists) in host-pathogen research. A much greater number of respondents permanently archive microbiological samples than archive host specimens, and less than half of respondents voucher host specimens from which microbiological samples were lethally collected. To foster collaborations between microbiologists and natural history collections, we provide recommendations for integrating vouchering techniques and archiving of microbiological samples into host-pathogen studies. This integrative approach exemplifies the premise underlying One Health initiatives, providing critical infrastructure for addressing related issues ranging from public health to global climate change and the biodiversity crisis.