Human-to-Human Transmission of Andes Virus Modeled in Syrian Hamsters.

Several occurrences of human-to-human transmission of Andes virus, an etiological agent of hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome, are documented. Syrian hamsters consistently model human hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome, yet neither transmission nor shedding has been investigated. We demonstrate horizontal virus transmission and show that Andes virus is shed efficiently from both inoculated and contact-infected hamsters.

Interrogating Phylogenetic Discordance Resolves Deep Splits in the Rapid Radiation of Old World Fruit Bats (Chiroptera: Pteropodidae).

The family Pteropodidae (Old World fruit bats) comprises $>$200 species distributed across the Old World tropics and subtropics. Most pteropodids feed on fruit, suggesting an early origin of frugivory, although several lineages have shifted to nectar-based diets. Pteropodids are of exceptional conservation concern with $>$50% of species considered threatened, yet the systematics of this group has long been debated, with uncertainty surrounding early splits attributed to an ancient rapid diversification. Resolving the relationships among the main pteropodid lineages is essential if we are to fully understand their evolutionary distinctiveness, and the extent to which these bats have transitioned to nectar-feeding. Here we generated orthologous sequences for $>$1400 nuclear protein-coding genes (2.8 million base pairs) across 114 species from 43 genera of Old World fruit bats (57% and 96% of extant species- and genus-level diversity, respectively), and combined phylogenomic inference with filtering by information content to resolve systematic relationships among the major lineages. Concatenation and coalescent-based methods recovered three distinct backbone topologies that were not able to be reconciled by filtering via phylogenetic information content. Concordance analysis and gene genealogy interrogation show that one topology is consistently the best supported, and that observed phylogenetic conflicts arise from both gene tree error and deep incomplete lineage sorting. In addition to resolving long-standing inconsistencies in the reported relationships among major lineages, we show that Old World fruit bats have likely undergone at least seven independent dietary transitions from frugivory to nectarivory. Finally, we use this phylogeny to identify and describe one new genus. [Chiroptera; coalescence; concordance; incomplete lineage sorting; nectar feeder; species tree; target enrichment.].

The Gambian epauletted fruit bat shows increased genetic divergence in the Ethiopian highlands and in an area of rapid urbanization.

The Gambian epauletted fruit bat (Epomophorus gambianus) is an abundant species that roosts in both urban and rural settings. The possible role of E. gambianus as a reservoir host of zoonotic diseases underlines the need to better understand the species movement patterns. So far, neither observational nor phylogenetic studies have identified the dispersal range or behavior of this species. Comparative analyses of mitochondrial and nuclear markers from 20 localities across the known distribution of E. gambianus showed population panmixia, except for the populations in Ethiopia and southern Ghana (Accra and Ve-Golokwati). The Ethiopian population may be ancestral and is highly divergent to the species across the rest of its range, possibly reflecting isolation of an ancient colonization along an east-west axis. Mitochondrial haplotypes in the Accra population display a strong signature of a past bottleneck event; evidence of either an ancient or recent bottleneck using microsatellite data, however, was not detected. Demographic analyses identified population expansion in most of the colonies, except in the female line of descent in the Accra population. The molecular analyses of the colonies from Ethiopia and southern Ghana show gender dispersal bias, with the mitochondrial DNA fixation values over ten times those of the nuclear markers. These findings indicate free mixing of the species across great distances, which should inform future epidemiological studies.

The complete mitochondrial genome of Epomophorus gambianus (Chiroptera: Pteropodidae) and its phylogenetic analysis.

The Gambian epauletted fruit bat, Epomophorus gambianus, is widely distributed across sub-Saharan Africa. Its assembled and annotated mitochondrial genome (GenBank accession no. KT963027) is 16,702 bases in length, containing 13 protein-coding genes, 22 transfer RNA genes, two ribosomal RNA genes and two non-coding regions: the control region (D-loop) and the origin of light-strand replication (OL). The average base composition is 32.2% A; 27.6% C; 14% G; and 26.1% T. The mitogenome presented a structural composition greatly conserved between members of the Pteropodidae family.