DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15645099
title: Unveiling the Ecological Drivers of Bat-Borne Viral Epidemics: A Climate-Driven Risk Assessment

description: Bats serve as natural reservoirs for numerous lethal viruses, significantly threatening global public health. Despite the substantial rise in identified bat-hosted viruses, our understanding of their ecological dynamics remains limited, hindering the development of effective preventive strategies for bat-borne viral diseases. We analyzed virus-host associations in 1,350 bat species within a One Health framework to identify how ecological, evolutionary, and socioeconomic factors shape global hotspots of bat-borne viruses. By examining 17 host, environmental, and socioeconomic variables, we found that while socioeconomic factors strongly influence observed viral patterns by driving research effort, the underlying richness of bat-borne viruses, including potentially human-infectious and epidemic viruses (PIVs and PEVs), was primarily driven by temperature seasonality and dietary strategy (phytophagy). Socioeconomic factors, especially human population density, further amplify viral detection and spillover risk. Mapping hotspot regions revealed that PEV-carrying bats clustered in both tropical seasonal forests and densely populated temperate zones. Projections to 2050 showed that climate and land-use change would expand zones of potential human-PEV bat contact inlandward by approximately 13%. Together, these findings highlight the need for integrated, One Health-based surveillance and intervention strategies targeting dynamic risk hotspots in a rapidly changing world.
description: Supplementary Materials

for “Unveiling the Ecological Drivers of Global Bat-Borne Viral Epidemics: A Climate-Driven Risk Assessment”

Yang Wanga#*, Liang Lüa#, Ghulam Nabia,b#, Tianlong Caic, Jiaxin Zhanga, Xu Liua, Gang Songd, Xinglou Yange, Limin Wanga, Dongming Lia*

 

a Hebei Key Laboratory of Animal Physiology, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; Hebei Collaborative Innovation Center for Eco-Environment, Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Molecular and Cellular Biology, College of Life Sciences, Hebei Normal University, Shijiazhuang 050024, China. 

b Department of Zoology, Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, University of Lahore, Lahore, 54000, Pakistan.

c School of Life Sciences, Westlake University, Hangzhou 310058, China.

d Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.

e Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650023, China.

 

#These authors equally contributed to this study.

*Correspondence: Yang Wang, Email: wangy@hebtu.edu.cn; Dongming Li, Email: lidongming@hebtu.edu.cn

 

Running title: Risk Assessments of Bat-borne Viral Epidemics

 

 

Contents

Supplementary Methods (including Figs. M1 and Tables M1–M2, and Supplementary References)

Supplementary Figures: Figure 1~6

Supplementary Tables: Table 1~7

Appendix A: Literature-curated bat–virus association records

Appendix B: Data availability and analytical code

Note: Supplementary Materials are provided as four separate files: Supplementary Methods, Supplementary Figure and Tables, Appendix A, and Appendix B. All are referenced collectively as Supplementary Materials throughout the manuscript.