A metaanalysis of bat phylogenetics and positive selection based on genomes and transcriptomes from 18 species

Hawkins, John A.; Kaczmarek, Maria E.; Müller, Marcel A.; Drosten, Christian; Press, William H.; Sawyer, Sara L.

We find that the positively selected genes in bats are dominated by genes involved with immunity. This could have something to do with the high pathogen load that bats are thought to carry (3), but on the other hand, this finding is not unusual. Bats now join many other species groups in the finding that immune processes stand out for the strength of positive natural selection that has shaped them. The same has been found in many diverse species groups including primates (82, 83) , fish (84) , and insects (85) . It has been noted that the bats have some usual aspects of their immune systems (86) (87) (88) , which could be consistent with the evolutionary signatures of rapid sequence evolution that we observe in many genes involved in immunity.