Viral metacommunities associated to bats and rodents at different spatial scales.

One of the main goals of community ecology is to measure the relative importance of environmental filters to understand patterns of species distribution at different temporal and spatial scales. Likewise, the identification of factors that shape symbiont metacommunity structures is important in disease ecology because resulting structures drive disease transmission. We tested the hypothesis that distributions of virus species and viral families from rodents and bats are defined by shared responses to host phylogeny and host functional characteristics, shaping the viral metacommunity structures at four spatial scales (Continental, Biogeographical, Zoogeographical, and Regional). The contribution of host phylogeny and host traits to the metacommunity of viruses at each spatial scale was calculated using a redundant analysis of canonical ordering (RDA). For rodents, at American Continental scale the coherence of viral species metacommunity increased while the spatial scale decreased and Quasi-Clementsian structures were observed. This pattern suggests a restricted distribution of viruses through their hosts, while in the Big Mass (Europe, Africa, and Asia), the coherence decreased as spatial scale decreased. Viral species metacommunities associated with bats was dominated by random structures along all spatial scales. We suggest that this random pattern is a result of the presence of viruses with high occupancy range such as rabies (73%) and coronavirus (27%), that disrupt such structures. At viral family scale, viral metacommunities associated with bats showed coherent structures, with the emergence of Quasi- Clementsian and Checkerboard structures. RDA analysis indicates that the assemblage of viral diversity associated with rodents and bats responds to phylogenetic and functional characteristics, which alternate between spatial scales. Several of these variations could be subject to the spatial scale, in spite of this, we could identify patterns at macro ecological scale. The application of metacommunity theory at symbiont scales is particularly useful for large-scale ecological analysis. Understanding the rules of host-virus association can be useful to take better decisions in epidemiological surveillance, control and even predictions of viral distribution and dissemination. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: Supplementary material is available for this article at 10.1556/168.2018.19.2.9 and is accessible for authorized users.

Coronaviruses in bats from Mexico.

Bats are reservoirs for a wide range of human pathogens including Nipah, Hendra, rabies, Ebola, Marburg and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (CoV). The recent implication of a novel beta (ß)-CoV as the cause of fatal respiratory disease in the Middle East emphasizes the importance of surveillance for CoVs that have potential to move from bats into the human population. In a screen of 606 bats from 42 different species in Campeche, Chiapas and Mexico City we identified 13 distinct CoVs. Nine were alpha (α)-CoVs; four were ß-CoVs. Twelve were novel. Analyses of these viruses in the context of their hosts and ecological habitat indicated that host species is a strong selective driver in CoV evolution, even in allopatric populations separated by significant geographical distance; and that a single species/genus of bat can contain multiple CoVs. A ß-CoV with 96.5 % amino acid identity to the ß-CoV associated with human disease in the Middle East was found in a Nyctinomops laticaudatus bat, suggesting that efforts to identify the viral reservoir should include surveillance of the bat families Molossidae/Vespertilionidae, or the closely related Nycteridae/Emballonuridae. While it is important to investigate unknown viral diversity in bats, it is also important to remember that the majority of viruses they carry will not pose any clinical risk, and bats should not be stigmatized ubiquitously as significant threats to public health.