Two Novel Parvoviruses in Frugivorous New and Old World Bats

Canuti, Marta; Eis-Huebinger, Anna Maria; Deijs, Martin; de Vries, Michel; Drexler, Jan Felix; Oppong, Samuel K.; Müller, Marcel A.; Klose, Stefan M.; Wellinghausen, Nele; Cottontail, Veronika M.; Kalko, Elisabeth K. V.; Drosten, Christian; van der Hoek, Lia

Beyond these newly identified bat viruses, two recent studies reported the discovery of new parvoviruses in fecal samples from insectivore bats (Rhinolophidae, Hipposideridae, Vespertilionidae, Miniopteridae and Molossidae) [12, 16] . In both studies, the detected viruses belonged to the genus Dependovirus that mainly includes non-autonomous viruses. Additionally, in one of these studies a virus (TM-2p) was identified which is topologically located in the phylogenetic tree between the two parvoviral subfamilies Parvovirinae and Densovirinae [12] . Since fecal samples from insectivorous bats were investigated, TM-2p might be a virus infecting insects rather than bats and gotten into stools after having been ingested through the diet [12] . Due to difficulties in alignment (only 210 aa of the less conserved part of NS1 protein of TM-2p virus were available) it was however not possible to compare this virus with our sequences.