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 focused our study on Southeast Asia (SEA), a hotspot of biodiversity and EIDs with pandemic potential (Myers et al., 2000; Jones et al., 2008; Coker et al., 2011) . It is also a natural laboratory to study the evolutionary history (Guillén et al., 1997) and the impact of high human environmental pressures (Sodhi and Brook, 2006; Clements et al., 2006; Stibig et al., 2007; Wilcove et al., 2013) . For our study, we defined parasite species richness (PSR) as the total number of parasite species such as microparasites as well as macroparasites identified in a given host (Poulin and Morand, 2004; Bordes et al., 2007) at the regional scale of SEA. In the present study we aimed at investigating the likely factors that may explain PSR in bats from SEA. From the literature we compiled information on parasitic and infectious agents in SEA bats found, as well as information available on their life-history and ecological traits. Then, we tested potential factors that may explain the whole pool of parasite diversity in bats using phylogenetic comparative analyses and model selection.