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

Investigating parasitic and microbial diversity in bat species may help to identify species that are reservoir sources of a greater diversity of pathogens and to understand factors influencing this richness, particularly those related to life or ecological traits. The determinants of parasite diversity in wildlife may be linked to their biogeography (e.g., latitude, distribution area), ecology (e.g., density, migration), life-history traits (e.g., longevity and fecundity) or immunity (e.g., white blood cell counts, spleen size, immune gene diversity) (Morand and Poulin, 2000; Wegner et al., 2003; Nunn et al., 2003b; Guernier et al., 2004; Ezenwa, 2004; Bordes et al., 2007; Šimková et al., 2008; Pedersen and Grieves, 2008; Turmelle and Olival, 2009; Bordes and Morand, 2011; Nunn, 2012; Luis et al., 2013) . Some of these determinants can also influence the probability of contact of bats with humans and thus the potential risk of contamination and transmission; a widely distributed bat species living at high density has a greater probability of repeated contacts with humans than a species living in low density with a restricted distribution. This may be particularly true for synanthropic species that appear to be generalist in their ecology and rich in the parasite diversity they harbour (Herbreteau et al., 2012) . Finally, a question rarely investigated about species richness is: ''is there any correlation between microparasite (viruses, parasitic bacteria, protists, fungi) richness and macroparasite (helminths and arthropods) richness in bats?'' (Bordes et al., 2008; Turmelle and Olival, 2009 ). The diversity of microparasites (e.g., virus and bacteria) may then depend on the diversity of macroparasites (e.g., helminths) through the activation and maintenance of different pathways of the immune system (Bordes and Morand, 2011; Ezenwa and Jolles, 2011) . A positive correlation may suggest that hosts with high macroparasite diversity also harbour high viral and bacterial richness.