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

Wild animals are known to host different pathogens at the same time (Petney and Andrews, 1998; Drake and Bundy, 2000; Bordes et al., 2008; Bordes and Morand, 2011) . Polyparasitism (or multiple infections) and infection dynamics in host species are important features to understand the mechanisms of EID; the risk of disease transmission may depend on the pathogen richness found in natural reservoir species (Wolfe et al., 2005) . Morse (1993) termed this pathogen diversity in wildlife hosts the 'zoonotic pool'. In the literature, most studies emphasized the links between biodiversity loss and the risk of pathogen emergence and transmission (Keesing et al., 2009; Derne et al., 2011) , whereas very few investigated the role of parasite diversity, or the size of the 'zoonotic pool', in the risk of emergence.