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The Feverish Flight of Bats The only mammal that flies, a bat’s metabolism increases up to 15 times its resting rate, with body temperatures escalating to fever levels. Luis hypothesizes that this feverish flight may explain why a bat can host viruses that are not harmful to the bat, yet once transmitted to people can prove deadly. Fever is one mechanism that helps our immune system fight infections, but it fails when encountering a disease like Ebola. “Viruses in bats may have evolved to handle the ramped up immune response,” Luis explains. “In humans that would mean our immune system isn’t effective.” hantavirus, Luis suggests. In turn, higher doses of the virus in saliva could raise transmission rates when a mouse bites another mouse. As climate changes, food resources also change, affecting mice densities. To study stress in mice, Luis is writing a grant to test whether stress hormone levels rise as competition grows. The research would entail setting up enclosures stocked with mice and then adding in competitors, like voles, to see how mice respond. Meanwhile, Luis advises people not to stress out too much about hantavirus. “You’re twice as likely to be struck by lightning as you are to contract hantavirus,” she says. The epidemic potential of some other hosts Luis studies can be dramatic in comparison. Why Bats Survive and Transmit Viruses Bats can live with not one but sometimes multiple viruses, especially in tropical climates where the bat species diversity is high. Sometimes those viruses spill over to humans. Ebola likely originated from bats in Central Africa. SARS and Nipah virus are linked to bats in Southeast Asia. Luis once again takes advantage of mathematical modeling to find telling patterns that offer clues to why bats are such effective conveyers of disease to people. Her work does not diminish her appreciation for bats, which decorate her office as silhouettes. “Bats are really important, and we need to conserve them,” she says of their role as pollinators and predators of insects like mosquitoes. “What we need to do is to stop contact with humans and not kill bats.” Bats come into contact with people more often when they lose natural habitats, she explains. The Nipah virus, for example, is connected to cutting down native trees in Malaysia that sustained fruit bats. To survive, the bats roosted in domestic fruit trees. They ate fruit that then dropped to the ground and was in turn eaten by pigs foraging below. The first outbreak in 1999 showed the virus came from eating pigs. Out of 300 cases, 100 people died. “Ecological factors are important, as are Vision 2016 32 the number of species and the potential contacts of species with each other,” Luis says. She points out that certain kinds of bats naturally will roost in colonies numbering in the millions, often with multiple bat species. “It’s the perfect place for bats to interact, leading to high contact rates and transmissions across species,” she says. Bats fly. They cover long distances and can spread the virus to different regions, and meanwhile most bats remain unaffected by the viruses they carry. (See sidebar). The exception is rabies, which does kill bats that contract it. The case of the white-nose syndrome that has killed millions of bats in the eastern U.S. is different, because the disease comes from a newly introduced fungus. To find patterns, Luis is leading a research effort that entails sifting through 70 years of data on viruses identified in bats and rodents. So far, she’s documented that bats host more viruses per species than rodents do. That seems strange at first glance, with 2,200 species of rodents compared to 1,100 species of bats. The two groups rank No. 1 and No. 2 in highest numbers of species among mammals. In her newest article in Ecology Letters, Luis focuses on the ability of bats to transmit viruses from one species to another and how that common occurrence may help explain why bats serve as reservoirs for emerging viruses. She examined them in a community context, rather than as individual species, and compared them to rodents. The results suggest that viruses cross over more easily in bat species than in rodent species. Social bats and those that migrate share and spread more viruses. Her colorful graphic displays a network of arcing lines depicting how social bat species and those that migrate share and spread more viruses. The converging lines pinpoint certain communities and individual species of both bats and rodents that may be the highest contenders for transmitting wildlife diseases, narrowing the field for future studies. “Understanding the dynamics in wildlife is important to understand what leads to spillover into humans,” Luis stresses. “It’s urgent right now.” VPDF Image | Carbon Vision 2016
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