Viral metacommunities associated to bats and rodents at different spatial scales

Abstract

One of the main goals of community ecology is to measure the relative importance of environmental filters to understand patterns of species distribution at different temporal and spatial scales. Likewise, the identification of factors that shape symbiont metacommunity structures is important in disease ecology because resulting structures drive disease transmission. We tested the hypothesis that distributions of virus species and viral families from rodents and bats are defined by shared responses to host phylogeny and host functional characteristics, shaping the viral metacommunity structures at four spatial scales (Continental, Biogeographical, Zoogeographical, and Regional). The contribution of host phylogeny and host traits to the metacommunity of viruses at each spatial scale was calculated using a redundant analysis of canonical ordering (RDA). For rodents, at American Continental scale the coherence of viral species metacommunity increased while the spatial scale decreased and Quasi-Clementsian structures were observed. This pattern suggests a restricted distribution of viruses through their hosts, while in the Big Mass (Europe, Africa, and Asia), the coherence decreased as spatial scale decreased. Viral species metacommunities associated with bats was dominated by random structures along all spatial scales. We suggest that this random pattern is a result of the presence of viruses with high occupancy range such as rabies (73%) and coronavirus (27%), that disrupt such structures. At viral family scale, viral metacommunities associated with bats showed coherent structures, with the emergence of Quasi-Clementsian and Checkerboard structures. RDA analysis indicates that the assemblage of viral diversity associated with rodents and bats responds to phylogenetic and functional characteristics, which alternate between spatial scales. Several of these variations could be subject to the spatial scale, in spite of this, we could identify patterns at macro ecological scale. The application of metacommunity theory at symbiont scales is particularly useful for large-scale ecological analysis. Understanding the rules of host-virus association can be useful to take better decisions in epidemiological surveillance, control and even predictions of viral distribution and dissemination.

The Influence of Habitat on Viral Diversity in Neotropical Rodent Hosts

“…Considering that some species are reservoirs of numerous viruses, some of which have large impacts on human health, studies on viral diversity in rodents have recently increased [3,9,[84][85][86]. Hence, 173 viral species belonging to more than 65 genera have been described in rodents to date, among which 53 are zoonotic, such as mammarenaviruses and hantaviruses [30,87]. However, few studies have explored the links among viral diversity, host ecology, and habitats [8,88,89].…”

Viral networks and detection of potential zoonotic viruses in bats and rodents: A worldwide analysis

“…This is similar to results found by Luis et al () when building viral association networks in Rodentia and Chiroptera, who then used the centrality metrics as a response variable in a generalized linear model to determine the phylogenetic, functional and ecological characteristics that are responsible for this high connectivity in bats. This pattern of higher host diversity among bat viruses than rodent viruses has been observed in viral metacommunities using analyses at different spatial scales (Nieto‐Rabiela, Suzán, Wiratsudakul, & Rico‐Chávez, ), and it has been suggested that this is due to their higher dispersal ability compared with rodents (Wang, Walker, & Poon, ). However, since studies on viruses detected in others mammals have not yet been carried out at a similarly large scale, it is not clear whether bats' level of host–virus connectivity is atypically high among mammals; we can only conclude that it is higher than in rodents.…”

Rodent Virus Diversity and Differentiation across Post-Katrina New Orleans

“…Exploratory surveys indicate that the diversity and composition of virus assemblages differ among rodent host species [20,21,23,29]. Consistent with this, broad comparative assessments indicate that viral diversity and assemblage structure reflect rodent host phylogeny [30,31], with associations contingent on spatial scale [30]. Some evidence suggests that diversity also relates to ecological factors like host range size and sympatry [31], highlighting the potential for cross-species transmission to influence viral assemblage structure.…”