Despite the overall success of our brute-force RT-PCR approach at identifying previously unrecognized hantaviruses in frozen tissues [2, 3, [5] [6] [7] [10] [11] [12] [13] and tissues preserved in RNAlater ® RNA Stabilization Reagent [4, 8] , designing universal primers for the amplification of soricomorph-borne hantaviruses has presented continuing challenges. Thus, while it is likely that many more hantaviruses await discovery, overcoming technical barriers is essential to facilitating their detection. Viewed in this context, the failure to detect hantavirus RNA in all but one bat species was not altogether unexpected and may be attributed simply to suboptimal primer design and imperfect cycling conditions. Also, low RNA yields and poor RNA preservation in tissues fixed in ethanol under field conditions may have thwarted our efforts at obtaining more of the MOUV genome. That said, the successful amplification of hantavirus RNA from ethanol-fixed tissues is highly instructive and augments the pool of archival tissues for future exploratory studies of hantaviruses in bats, and possibly other insectivorous small mammals that share ancestral lineages with soricomorphs, such as hedgehogs (order Erinaceomorpha, family Erinaceidae).