Network analysis of host–virus communities in bats and rodents reveals determinants of cross-species transmission

Luis, Angela D.; O'Shea, Thomas J.; Hayman, David T. S.; Wood, James L. N.; Cunningham, Andrew A.; Gilbert, Amy T.; Mills, James N.; Webb, Colleen T.

The bat network had 143 host species connected by 110 viruses, and the rodent network had 196 host species connected by 185 viruses (Figs 3a, 4a, S1 and S2). A species' degree is the number of other host species it is connected to by shared viruses. Degree in bats ranged from 0 to 53 with a mean of 15.0 and in rodents ranged from 0 to 78 with a mean of 12.5 (Table 1 ; See Fig. S3 for degree distributions). The mean degree and mean weighted degree were significantly higher in bats than in rodents. There was significant transitivity (the probability that the adjacent nodes of a node are also connected) in both bats and rodents. Assortativity in bats was significant, suggesting that bat species with high degree tend to interact with other bat species of high degree (and low degree with low degree), but there is no evidence of this in rodents (Table 1) .