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

Among known reservoir species of viral EIDs, bats, which represent 20% of mammal species (Simmons, 2005) , play an important role in the maintenance and spread of various viral diseases (Sulkin and Allen, 1974; Ghatak et al., 2000; McColl et al., 2000; Olival et al., 2012; Luis et al., 2013) , including members of the alphaviruses, flaviviruses, paramyxoviruses, rhabdoviruses, coronaviruses and arenaviruses among others. Several notable bat-borne viruses are a public health concern in Southeast Asia (SEA) including Nipah virus, lyssaviruses and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (Mackenzie et al., 2003) . While bats are increasingly viewed as a threat to human health, these mammals have important roles in ecosystems such as pollination, seed dispersal and predation on insects. They are excellent bioindicators of environmental changes as they are sensitive to a wide range of anthropogenic disturbances such as urbanization, agricultural intensification, habitat loss and fragmentation (Clarke et al., 2005; Jones et al., 2008) . Understanding the ecology of these potential reservoirs of zoonotic pathogens is needed for improving http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijppaw.2014.06.003 2213-2244/Ó 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. on behalf of Australian Society for Parasitology. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). management of bats and their habitats, ultimately ensuring the health of humans, livestock and wildlife species, while keeping their functional roles in the ecosystems (Breed et al., 2006) .