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

Incidence of emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) has dramatically increased in recent decades (Jones et al., 2008) . A majority of EIDs are zoonoses and most of them originate in wildlife (zoonotic spillover). EID events are often due to environmental alteration, including agricultural intensification and habitat modification, global trade and travel (Cunningham, 1996; Daszak et al., 2000) . Several studies and reviews have suggested that the risk of disease transmission from wildlife to humans should increase with biodiversity loss and the expansion of human populations (Dobson et al., 2006; Keesing et al., 2009) , as humans will get into contact with a large pool of known and unknown zoonotic pathogens from wildlife (Mahy and Brown, 2000; Murray and Daszak, 2013) . Bacteria and rickettsia represent the majority of EIDs, viral and prion pathogens cause 25.4% and other parasites 20.3% of EID events (Jones et al., 2008) .