Mating strategy is determinant of Adenovirus prevalence in European bats

Federica Rossetto; Maria Iglesias-Caballero; H. Christoph Liedtke; Ivan Gomez-Mestre; Jose M. Berciano; Gonzalo Pérez-Suárez; Oscar de Paz; Juan E. Echevarría; Inmaculada Casas; Javier Juste

across species, we found that the number of Adenoviruses positive individuals was different 23 across localities and that the difference in prevalence between populations was correlated with The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the . https://doi.org/10.1101/626309 doi: bioRxiv preprint Introduction 44 Some viruses have the potential for cross-species transmission, with spillover episodes 45 from humans to wildlife and vice versa, a phenomenon referred to as zoonosis [1] . Current The heterogeneity (understood as the inter-and intra-specific variation) in the ability of The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the . https://doi.org/10.1101/626309 doi: bioRxiv preprint 5 53 directly or indirectly by a variety of ecological, social, or socioeconomic changes [3] that can 54 lead to new conditions boosting the expansion of the viruses to new host species or populations. 55 Recent studies have revealed that traits such as host phylogenetic relatedness, conservation 56 status, and geographical overlap are critical in the potential for cross-species transmission of 57 viruses [4, 5] . 58 The highest proportion of zoonotic viruses in mammals is found in bats, primates and 59 rodents [6] . Specific bat characteristics like their ability to fly, unique among mammals, or their 60 migratory capacity [7] , increase their potential role as vectors of diseases. Bats are natural 61 reservoirs for many viruses, such as Coronavirus, Nipah virus and Ebola related to new emerging 62 diseases that have received attention in the last years due to the potential risk they pose for 63 human pandemic events [8] [9] [10] or with important health and economic consequences world-64 wide, such as rabies outbreaks [11, 12] . The capacity to coexist with viruses (in the absence of 65 disease) is probably linked to the bats' immune-system which seems be different to that of other focusing not only on the analysis of fecal samples and internal tissues -as in previous studies-89 but also on the analysis of the oropharyngeal swabs. AdVs are detected in almost half of the 90 Iberian bat species studied, in both feces and in the upper respiratory tract (for the first time in 91 bats), establishing a possible fecal-oral transmission route in two Pipistrellus pygmaeus. 92 Moreover, they found a surprisingly high prevalence in this species together with the co-generic 93 P. kuhlii and the closely related giant noctule, Nyctalus lasiopterus, which accounted for the vast 94 majority of viruses detected in the study. These results have presented us with the opportunity to 95 analyze the abiotic factors or biotic traits determining prevalence of AdVs in European bats at 96 two levels: across-species and among individuals within a species.