ReviewBiological conservation2020
Guidelines for communicating about bats to prevent persecution in the time of COVID-19.
Review in Biological conservation, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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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
33 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Impacts of bat use of anthropogenic structures on bats and humans.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2026Pooled it
- Review
- Perceived Public Health Risks Associated with Bats on a Southwest Indian Ocean Island.EcoHealth · 2026Article
- Multipurpose Passive Surveillance of Bat-Borne Viruses in Hungary: Lyssaviruses and Filoviruses in Focus.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Barriers to public engagement with biodiversity conservation.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2025Article
- Habitat sharing and interspecies interactions in caves used by bats in the Republic of Congo.PeerJ · 2025Article
- Bat species assemblage predicts coronavirus prevalence.Nature communications · 2024Article
- The Consumption and Diversity Variation Responses of Agricultural Pests and Their Dietary Niche Differentiation in Insectivorous Bats.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Article
- Exploring People's Perception on Pros and Cons of Human-Bat Coexistence in Urban Environs in Southwestern Nigeria.Environmental health insights · 2024Article
- Robust evidence for bats as reservoir hosts is lacking in most African virus studies: a review and call to optimize sampling and conserve bats.Biology letters · 2023Review
- Review
- A cross-sectional survey on fruit bat-human interaction in Pakistan; one health perspective.One health outlook · 2023Article
- Negative Perception of Bats, Exacerbated by the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic, May Hinder Bat Conservation in Northern Uganda.Sustainability · 2022Article
- Revising the paradigm: Are bats really pathogen reservoirs or do they possess an efficient immune system?iScience · 2022Review
- Global response of conservationists across mass media likely constrained bat persecution due to COVID-19.Biological conservation · 2022Article
- Impacts of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic on the global demand for exotic pets: An expert elicitation approach.Global ecology and conservation · 2022Article
- An expert-curated global database of online newspaper articles on spiders and spider bites.Scientific data · 2022Article
- COVID-19, media coverage of bats and related Web searches: a turning point for bat conservation?Mammal review · 2022Review
- Why was this cited? Explainable machine learning applied to COVID-19 research literature.Scientometrics · 2022Article
- One Health, COVID-19, and a Right to Health for Human and Nonhuman Animals.Health and human rights · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
While the current COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc on human health and national economies, conservationists are struggling to prevent misguided persecution of bats, which are misleadingly being blamed for spreading the disease. Although at a global level, such persecution is relatively uncommon, even a few misguided actions have the potential to cause irrevocable damage to already vulnerable species. Here, we draw on the latest findings from psychology, to explain why some conservation messaging may be reinforcing misleading negative associations. We provide guidelines to help ensure that conservation messaging is working to neutralize dangerous and unwarranted negative-associations between bats and disease-risk. We provide recommendations around three key areas of psychological science: (i) debunking misinformation; (ii) counteracting negative associations; and (iii) changing harmful social norms. We argue that only by carefully framing accurate, honest, and duly contextualized information, will we be able to best serve society and present an unbiased perspective of bats. We hope this guidance will help conservation practitioners and researchers to develop effective message framing strategies that minimize zoonotic health risks and support biodiversity and its associated ecosystem services.
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Registered trials
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.