ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2018
Livestock abundance predicts vampire bat demography, immune profiles and bacterial infection risk.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 42 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
42 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Macroimmunology: The drivers and consequences of spatial patterns in wildlife immune defence.The Journal of animal ecology · 2020Pooled it
- Handling Stress and Sample Storage Are Associated with Weaker Complement-Mediated Bactericidal Ability in Birds but Not Bats.Physiological and biochemical zoology : PBZPooled it
- Total Immunoglobulin G Variation Through the Phenological Cycle of Migrant and Resident Lesser Long-Nosed Bats (Leptonycteris yerbabuenae) in the Drylands of Mexico and Its Relationship With Bacterial Killing-Ability of Plasma.Journal of experimental zoology. Part A, Ecological and integrative physiology · 2026Article
- Neotropical bats as sentinels for emerging zoonoses in Central America: A case study identifying Trypanosoma cruzi in bats from Belize using metagenomic next-generation sequencing.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2026Article
- Longitudinal Impacts of Forest Loss on Bartonella and Hemotropic Mycoplasma Dynamics in Vampire Bats Within a Fragmented Habitat.Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- Virus-Dependent Geographic Structure of Co-Circulating Viruses in a Single Bat Species.Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- Future climate change and the distributional shift of the common vampire bat, Desmodus rotundus.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Dynamics of influenza transmission in vampire bats revealed by longitudinal monitoring and a large-scale anthropogenic perturbation.Science advances · 2025Article
- Habitat sharing and interspecies interactions in caves used by bats in the Republic of Congo.PeerJ · 2025Article
- Bat cellular immunity varies by year and dietary habit amidst land conversion.Conservation physiology · 2024Article
- VirulentmSphere · 2023Article
- Epidemiological connectivity between humans and animals across an urban landscape.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Epidemiological connectivity between humans and animals across an urban landscape.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Epidemiological connectivity between humans and animals across an urban landscape.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Feeding the fever: Complex host-pathogen dynamics along continuous resource gradients.Ecology and evolution · 2023Review
- Tropical bat ectoparasitism in continuous versus fragmented forests: A gap analysis and preliminary meta-analysis.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Serum proteomics reveals a tolerant immune phenotype across multiple pathogen taxa in wild vampire bats.Frontiers in immunology · 2023Article
- Ecological determinants of rabies virus dynamics in vampire bats and spillover to livestock.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus) abundance and frequency of attacks to cattle in landscapes of Yucatan, Mexico.Tropical animal health and production · 2022Article
- Longitudinal dynamics of co-infecting gastrointestinal parasites in a wild sheep population.Parasitology · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
14 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Human activities create novel food resources that can alter wildlife-pathogen interactions. If resources amplify or dampen, pathogen transmission probably depends on both host ecology and pathogen biology, but studies that measure responses to provisioning across both scales are rare. We tested these relationships with a 4-year study of 369 common vampire bats across 10 sites in Peru and Belize that differ in the abundance of livestock, an important anthropogenic food source. We quantified innate and adaptive immunity from bats and assessed infection with two common bacteria. We predicted that abundant livestock could reduce starvation and foraging effort, allowing for greater investments in immunity. Bats from high-livestock sites had higher microbicidal activity and proportions of neutrophils but lower immunoglobulin G and proportions of lymphocytes, suggesting more investment in innate relative to adaptive immunity and either greater chronic stress or pathogen exposure. This relationship was most pronounced in reproductive bats, which were also more common in high-livestock sites, suggesting feedbacks between demographic correlates of provisioning and immunity. Infection with both
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