Seasonal shedding of coronavirus by straw-colored fruit bats at urban roosts in Africa.

ABSTRACT: The straw-colored fruit bat (Eidolon helvum) is a pteropodid whose conservation is crucial for maintaining functional connectivity of plant populations in tropical Africa. Land conversion has pushed this species to adapt to roosting in urban centers across its range. These colonies often host millions of individuals, creating intensive human-bat contact interfaces that could facilitate the spillover of coronaviruses shed by these bats. A better understanding of coronavirus dynamics in these roosts is needed to identify peak times of exposure risk in order to propose evidence-based management that supports safe human-bat coexistence, as well as the conservation of this chiropteran. We studied the temporal patterns of coronavirus shedding in E. helvum, by testing thousands of longitudinally-

SUBMITTER: Montecino-Latorre D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9477308 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature