Bats Prove To Be Rich Reservoirs for Emerging Viruses

Emerging pathogens, many of them viruses, continue to surprise us, providing many newly recognized diseases to study and to try to control. Many of these emergent viruses are zoonotic, transmitted from reservoirs in wild or domestic animals to humans, either by insect vectors or by exposure to the droppings or tissues of such animals. One rich— but, until recently, underappreciated—source of emergent viruses is bats (Chiroptera, meaning “hand wing”). Accounting for 1,116, or nearly one-fourth, of the 4,600 recognized species of mammals, bats are grouped into two suborders — Megachiroptera, which contains a single family, Pteropodidae, consisting of 42 genera and 186 species, and Microchiroptera, which contains 17 families, 160 genera, and 930 species.