Parasite and viral species richness of Southeast Asian bats: Fragmentation of area distribution matters

Gay, Noellie; Olival, Kevin J.; Bumrungsri, Sara; Siriaroonrat, Boripat; Bourgarel, Mathieu; Morand, Serge

We measured sampling effort, or ascertainment bias, in two ways. First, we defined the 'sampling effort' as the sample size or number of individual bats tested for a given parasite or microbe screened (positive or negative). Second, the 'investigation effort' is the number of publications about a given parasite or microbe for a given host species, which represents the research effort for Table 1 List of bat species with information on parasite richness (endoparasitic helminths, ectoparasitic arthropods, virus species, virus genus and virus family), sampling effort (SE Para = number of individual bats investigated for a parasite, SE virus = number of individual bats investigated for a virus), investigation effort (Pub para = number of publications citing a parasitic of microbial agent in a given bat species, Pub bats = number of publication of a bat species), body mass (g), distribution size (km 2 ), distribution shape (area range/circumference), colony size (0 = 610; 1 = 6100; 2 = 61000; 3 = >1000), roosting behavior (0 = solitary; 1 = depend; 2 = gregarious), breeding seasons (1 = one season; 2 = two seasons; 3 = all year long) and IUCN status (0 = least concern; 1 = near threatened; 2 = vulnerable). Residual values of the linear regression between log of PSR and sampling effort were calculated. We investigated residual variations among bat hosts in order to identify bat species that harbour more pathogens than expected by the regression model (i.e., bat species with positive residual values), or conversely, to identify bat species that harbour fewer pathogens than the model predicts (negative residual values). This approach can be used to target taxa for future pathogen discovery, as was proposed by Herbreteau et al. (2012) for rodents and rodent-borne diseases. Of the 292 species of bats inventoried in SEA, information on parasite species richness and sampling effort was obtained for 41 bat species, whereas information on viral species richness and sampling effort was obtained for 33 bat species.