Demographic and environmental drivers of metagenomic viral diversity in vampire bats.

ABSTRACT: Viruses infect all forms of life and play critical roles as agents of disease, drivers of biochemical cycles and sources of genetic diversity for their hosts. Our understanding of viral diversity derives primarily from comparisons among host species, precluding insight into how intraspecific variation in host ecology affects viral communities or how predictable viral communities are across populations. Here we test spatial, demographic and environmental hypotheses explaining viral richness and community composition across populations of common vampire bats, which occur in diverse habitats of North, Central and South America. We demonstrate marked variation in viral communities that was not consistently predicted by a null model of declining community similarity with increasing spatial or g

SUBMITTER: Bergner LM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7004108 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature