Global patterns in coronavirus diversity

Anthony, Simon J.; Johnson, Christine K.; Greig, Denise J.; Kramer, Sarah; Che, Xiaoyu; Wells, Heather; Hicks, Allison L.; Joly, Damien O.; Wolfe, Nathan D.; Daszak, Peter; Karesh, William; Lipkin, W. I.; Morse, Stephen S.; Mazet, Jonna A. K.; Goldstein, Tracey

In total, we estimated that there are at least 3,204 CoVs (based on the cluster definition used in this study) in bats. This suggests that although there is still a large number of coronaviruses that remain to be discovered, their detection remains an achievable goal, and we advocate for their discovery given the potential for even greater insights into the global ecology and evolution of these viruses (e.g. further investigation into regional differences in host switching), and the opportunity to elucidate their individual zoonotic potential (Ge et al. 2013; Wang et al. 2014; Yang et al. 2014; Anthony et al. 2017 ). Building on our study, we suggest that future surveillance efforts should consider the number of samples carefully and include up to 400 individuals (of either sex) per species in order to maximize the chance of detecting all CoVs, and that including less than 154 individuals per species might reduce the chance of finding even one virus and would likely produce a poor return on investment. We also recommend that feces (or rectal swabs) followed by saliva (or oral swabs) should be prioritized if resources are limited and all sample types cannot be processed, and that sampling should be biased towards immature animals and in the dry season.