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

The analysis of morphological and behavioral traits and presence of AdVs in bats is also 98 useful for the understanding of viral transmission dynamics. In fact, little is known about the 99 transmission mechanisms of AdVs and no study has focused on transmission in bats. A handful 100 of studies in humans suggest that transmission may need direct contact or at least a droplet 101 spraying (such as those produced by coughing or sneezing) or aerosol [27] [28] [29] . The strong host 102 specificity and the parallelism between host and AdVs phylogenies found for bats [16, 30] No study has focused so far on the analyses of the determinant factors influencing 106 prevalence of viruses on bats at both species and individual levels. Across species, Webber et al. 107 [32] found that viral richness was positively correlated with group size as predicted by the 108 contact-rate hypothesis. In turn, at the intra-specific level Dietrich et al. presented in S1 Table) . Moreover, the same result was recovered when using AdVs presence as a 166 binomial dependent variable (S2 Table) , indicating a significantly higher AdVs presence in bat 167 species not engaging in swarming for mating.