Bats host major mammalian paramyxoviruses

Drexler, Jan Felix; Corman, Victor Max; Müller, Marcel Alexander; Maganga, Gael Darren; Vallo, Peter; Binger, Tabea; Gloza-Rausch, Florian; Rasche, Andrea; Yordanov, Stoian; Seebens, Antje; Oppong, Samuel; Sarkodie, Yaw Adu; Pongombo, Célestin; Lukashev, Alexander N.; Schmidt-Chanasit, Jonas; Stöcker, Andreas; Carneiro, Aroldo José Borges; Erbar, Stephanie; Maisner, Andrea; Fronhoffs, Florian; Buettner, Reinhard; Kalko, Elisabeth K.V.; Kruppa, Thomas; Franke, Carlos Roberto; Kallies, René; Yandoko, Emmanuel R.N.; Herrler, Georg; Reusken, Chantal; Hassanin, Alexandre; Krüger, Detlev H.; Matthee, Sonja; Ulrich, Rainer G.; Leroy, Eric M.; Drosten, Christian

In spite of our preference for parsimony-based analysis, we have challenged this result by repetition in a probabilistic approach, testing the influence of alternative hypotheses by either restricting the trait change model or imposing fossilised ancestral state assumptions 40 . These analyses confirmed the results of the parsimony model and formally excluded other host hypotheses within the available data set. However, it should be mentioned that ancestral state analyses have not been systematically applied to the theoretical problem of viral host switching before. Many open questions remain, including the essential issue of developing significance criteria in host hypothesis testing. Only if complex data sets like ours become available for several other virus taxa, it will be possible to approach this major (2), myzopodidae (2), mystacinidae (1), Furipteridae (1).