ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2020
Viral zoonotic risk is homogenous among taxonomic orders of mammalian and avian reservoir hosts.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 194 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
194 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 402 citations in OpenAlex.
- Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Emerging Viral Zoonotic Diseases, 2016-2026.Transboundary and emerging diseases · 2026Pooled it
- Diversity and transmission and zoonotic potential of microbes in true insectivores.Nature communications · 2025Pooled it
- Influence of Host and Landscape-Associated Factors in the Infection and Transmission of Pathogens: The Case of Directly Transmitted Virus in Mammals.Veterinary medicine and science · 2025Pooled it
- Review
- Exploring the impacts of wildlife trade on zoonotic spillover and disease outbreaks: A multiple-perspective study.One health (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2026Article
- Global status, bias risks, and ecological integration of wild bat and rodent virome research.One health (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2026Review
- A multiregional serosurvey of RNA virus-reactive antibodies in bats and rodents reveals the enzootic presence of flavi- and paramyxoviruses in African Pteropodidae.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2026Article
- Modeling climate-driven changes in potential zoonotic virus density across Australia.iScience · 2026Article
- Virome Diversity in Three Bat Species in Different Environments in Southern Spain.Microorganisms · 2026Article
- One Health in Mesoamerica: historical legacies, current challenges, and strategic directions.One health outlook · 2026Article
- Drivers of bat researchers' intent to adopt field hygiene practices.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2026Article
- The raphe nuclear organization and serotonergic system in the bat (Artibeus planirostris).Journal of anatomy · 2026Article
- Insectivores exhibit superior microbial network connectivity and elevated zoonotic risk by 2035 relative to rodents and bats.Science China. Life sciences · 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
- Going wild: prioritizing experimental models of rodent-borne viruses to decode zoonotic spillover and pandemic risk.Journal of virology · 2026Review
- Global approaches to infectious disease surveillance and modeling.Nature medicine · 2026Review
- Invasive Alien Species of European Union Concern: A Systematic Review of High-Priority Pathogens in 22 Species in a One Health Framework.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Review
- Ecological Factors and Host Community Characteristics as Potential Drivers of Bat RNA Virus Spillover.Biology · 2026Article
- Drivers of Viral Diversity and Sharing in Marine Mammals.Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- Article
134 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The notion that certain animal groups disproportionately maintain and transmit viruses to humans due to broad-scale differences in ecology, life history, and physiology currently influences global health surveillance and research in disease ecology, virology, and immunology. To directly test whether such "special reservoirs" of zoonoses exist, we used literature searches to construct the largest existing dataset of virus-reservoir relationships, consisting of the avian and mammalian reservoir hosts of 415 RNA and DNA viruses along with their histories of human infection. Reservoir host effects on the propensity of viruses to have been reported as infecting humans were rare and when present were restricted to one or two viral families. The data instead support a largely host-neutral explanation for the distribution of human-infecting viruses across the animal orders studied. After controlling for higher baseline viral richness in mammals versus birds, the observed number of zoonoses per animal order increased as a function of their species richness. Animal orders of established importance as zoonotic reservoirs including bats and rodents were unexceptional, maintaining numbers of zoonoses that closely matched expectations for mammalian groups of their size. Our findings show that variation in the frequency of zoonoses among animal orders can be explained without invoking special ecological or immunological relationships between hosts and viruses, pointing to a need to reconsider current approaches aimed at finding and predicting novel zoonoses.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.