Preventing pandemics at the pre-emergence stage

Background/Question/Methods

Bats are hosts of human pathogens that have pandemic potential, including coronaviruses, henipaviruses, and filoviruses. Bats are also key pollinators, seed dispersers, and insect consumers and may be sensitive to environmental change. Many studies correlate spillover of bat pathogens with land use change and other anthropogenic stressors, although the mechanisms that account for the correlations are rarely identified. We collected and analyzed data over 25 years on land use change, bat ecology, bat behavior, and Hendra virus spillover events. We integrated these data in Bayesian network models to predict clusters of spillovers.

Results/Conclusions

Our work indicates that ecological disruption may trigger the cascade of events that leads to spillover of bat pathogens to humans. Our data show that the interaction between land-use change and climate leads to bat population fission and residency in agricultural and urban areas, where periodic food shortages drive clusters of spillovers. Pulses of winter flowering of trees in remnant forests appeared to prevent spillover. We consider how to proactively prevent spillover by addressing the upstream factors that drive the transmission of pathogens from animals to humans.