DOI: 10.5061/dryad.61tc3hd
title: Data from: Disentangling serology to elucidate henipa‐ and filovirus transmission in Madagascar fruit bats

description: Bats are reservoirs for emerging human pathogens, including Hendra and
 Nipah henipaviruses and Ebola and Marburg filoviruses. These viruses
 demonstrate predictable patterns in seasonality and age structure across
 multiple systems; previous work suggests that they may circulate in
 Madagascar's endemic fruit bats, which are widely consumed as human
 food. We aimed to (a) document the extent of henipa‐ and filovirus
 exposure among Malagasy fruit bats, (b) explore seasonality in
 seroprevalence and serostatus in these bat populations and (c) compare
 mechanistic hypotheses for possible transmission dynamics underlying these
 data. To this end, we amassed and analysed a unique dataset documenting
 longitudinal serological henipa‐ and filovirus dynamics in three
 Madagascar fruit bat species. We uncovered serological evidence of
 exposure to Hendra‐/Nipah‐related henipaviruses in Eidolon dupreanum,
 Pteropus rufus and Rousettus madagascariensis, to Cedar‐related
 henipaviruses in E. dupreanum and R. madagascariensis and to Ebola‐related
 filoviruses in P. rufus and R. madagascariensis. We demonstrated
 significant seasonality in population‐level seroprevalence and individual
 serostatus for multiple viruses across these species, linked to the female
 reproductive calendar. An age‐structured subset of the data highlighted
 evidence of waning maternal antibodies in neonates, increasing
 seroprevalence in young and decreasing seroprevalence late in life.
 Comparison of mechanistic epidemiological models fit to these data offered
 support for transmission hypotheses permitting waning antibodies but
 retained immunity in adult‐age bats. Our findings suggest that bats may
 seasonally modulate mechanisms of pathogen control, with consequences for
 population‐level transmission. Additionally, we narrow the field of
 candidate transmission hypotheses by which bats are presumed to host and
 transmit potentially zoonotic viruses globally.
description: Age-structured serology
 data for Madagascar fruit batsThe attached .xls file
 contains all raw data used in the associated publication,
 "Disentangling serology to elucidate henipa- and filovirus
 transmission in Madagascar." The dataset identifies all individual
 bats by a unique sampleID. Each bat is listed multiple times in the
 dataset, corresponding to different antigens which were serologically
 surveyed. Each unique sampleID is associated with relevant ecological
 metadata: site and date of sampling, species, sex, age class (adult vs.
 juvenile), age in years from cementum annuli tooth analysis, mass in
 grams, and forearm length in mm. The "kin" column lists the
 sampleID of dam-pup pairs, such that a dam with a unique sampleID will
 have her pup's ID listed under the kin column and vice-versa; all
 animals for which this pairing is not relevant (most) receive an
 "NA" value in this column. The "recap" column
 indicates whether an animal was recaptured ("Y" or
 "N") during our sampling. Seventeen animals in this data subset
 were recaptured (recap="Y"), and the date of capture can be used
 to determine which capture event is indicated by a given row in the
 dataset. Finally, "antigen" givens the antigen tested for a
 given row in the dataset and "titer" indicates the corresponding
 MFI value for that Luminex test. Most of the data correspond to researcher
 = "Brook_et_al" (our research team), though we have also
 included researcher = "IPM" data used in some of the seasonal
 analyses. In these cases, no raw serotiter was available, and we list only
 the result ("seropositive" vs. "seronegative") of the
 corresponding test (ELISA or SNT).Brook_et_al_mada_fruit_bat_serology.xls