10.1371/journal.pntd.0004815
Barbara A. Han
Barbara
A. Han
John Paul Schmidt
John
Paul Schmidt
Laura W. Alexander
Laura
W. Alexander
Sarah E. Bowden
Sarah E.
Bowden
David T. S. Hayman
David
T. S. Hayman
John M. Drake
John
M. Drake
Undiscovered Bat Hosts of Filoviruses
Public Library of Science
2016
neonate body sizes
trait similarity
range overlap
filovirus surveillance
New bat species
high-probability targets
Preventing future outbreaks
wildlife reservoirs
40 years
bat species
results spotlight
discriminates hosts
filovirus-positive bat species
host species
conservation threats
future filovirus surveillance
Filoviruses Ebola
filovirus-positive bats
Undiscovered Bat Hosts
Southeast Asia
2016-07-14 15:46:14
Dataset
https://plos.figshare.com/articles/dataset/Undiscovered_Bat_Hosts_of_Filoviruses/3899874
<div><p>Ebola and other filoviruses pose significant public health and conservation threats by causing high mortality in primates, including humans. Preventing future outbreaks of ebolavirus depends on identifying wildlife reservoirs, but extraordinarily high biodiversity of potential hosts in temporally dynamic environments of equatorial Africa contributes to sporadic, unpredictable outbreaks that have hampered efforts to identify wild reservoirs for nearly 40 years. Using a machine learning algorithm, generalized boosted regression, we characterize potential filovirus-positive bat species with estimated 87% accuracy. Our model produces two specific outputs with immediate utility for guiding filovirus surveillance in the wild. First, we report a profile of intrinsic traits that discriminates hosts from non-hosts, providing a biological caricature of a filovirus-positive bat species. This profile emphasizes traits describing adult and neonate body sizes and rates of reproductive fitness, as well as species’ geographic range overlap with regions of high mammalian diversity. Second, we identify several bat species ranked most likely to be filovirus-positive on the basis of intrinsic trait similarity with known filovirus-positive bats. New bat species predicted to be positive for filoviruses are widely distributed outside of equatorial Africa, with a majority of species overlapping in Southeast Asia. Taken together, these results spotlight several potential host species and geographical regions as high-probability targets for future filovirus surveillance.</p></div>