TY - JOUR
T1 - Human disturbance increases coronavirus prevalence in bats
AU - Warmuth, Vera M.
AU - Metzler, Dirk
AU - Zamora-Gutierrez, Veronica
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2023 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY).
PY - 2023/3
Y1 - 2023/3
N2 - Human land modification is a known driver of animal-to-human transmission of infectious agents (zoonotic spillover). Infection prevalence in the reservoir is a key predictor of spillover, but landscape-level associations between the intensity of land modification and infection rates in wildlife remain largely untested. Bat-borne coronaviruses have caused three major disease outbreaks in humans: severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome, and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). We statistically link high-resolution land modification data with bat coronavirus surveillance records and show that coronavirus prevalence significantly increases with the intensity of human impact across all climates and levels of background biodiversity. The most significant contributors to the overall human impact are agriculture, deforestation, and mining. Regions of high predicted bat coronavirus prevalence coincide with global disease hotspots, suggesting that infection prevalence in wildlife may be an important factor underlying links between human land modification and zoonotic disease emergence.
AB - Human land modification is a known driver of animal-to-human transmission of infectious agents (zoonotic spillover). Infection prevalence in the reservoir is a key predictor of spillover, but landscape-level associations between the intensity of land modification and infection rates in wildlife remain largely untested. Bat-borne coronaviruses have caused three major disease outbreaks in humans: severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome, and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). We statistically link high-resolution land modification data with bat coronavirus surveillance records and show that coronavirus prevalence significantly increases with the intensity of human impact across all climates and levels of background biodiversity. The most significant contributors to the overall human impact are agriculture, deforestation, and mining. Regions of high predicted bat coronavirus prevalence coincide with global disease hotspots, suggesting that infection prevalence in wildlife may be an important factor underlying links between human land modification and zoonotic disease emergence.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85151324378&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1126/sciadv.add0688
DO - 10.1126/sciadv.add0688
M3 - Artículo
C2 - 37000877
AN - SCOPUS:85151324378
SN - 2375-2548
VL - 9
JO - Science Advances
JF - Science Advances
IS - 13
M1 - eadd0688
ER -