ArticleAnnals of the New York Academy of Sciences2021
Sick bats stay home alone: fruit bats practice social distancing when faced with an immunological challenge.
Article in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 35 citations in OpenAlex.
- Serum proteome of the Egyptian rousette bat (Rousettus aegyptiacus) reveals signatures of immunity, proteostasis, and metabolism.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Social immunity in a supercolonial invasive ant: Nest structure confers immune function.The Journal of animal ecology · 2026Article
- Dinner Date: Opposite-Sex Pairs of Fruit Bats (Biology · 2025Article
- Current reproductive effort shapes the response to infection in a passerine bird.The Journal of animal ecology · 2025Article
- Single-cell and Spatial Transcriptomics Illuminate Bat Immunity and Barrier Tissue Evolution.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Article
- Cooperative behaviors and social interactions in the carnivorous bat Vampyrum spectrum.PloS one · 2025Article
- Biologging in a free-ranging mammal reveals apparent energetic trade-offs among physiological and behavioural components of the acute-phase response.Biology letters · 2024Article
- Increased Susceptibility ofViruses · 2024Article
- Molecular determinants of cross-species transmission in emerging viral infections.Microbiology and molecular biology reviews : MMBR · 2024Review
- Disease tolerance as immune defense strategy in bats: One size fits all?PLoS pathogens · 2024Review
- Conference Report: LPMHealthcare Emerging Viruses 2023 (EVOX23): Pandemics-Learning from the Past and Present to Prepare for the Future.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Advances in understanding bat infection dynamics across biological scales.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Review
- In sickness and in health: the dynamics of the fruit bat gut microbiota under a bacterial antigen challenge and its association with the immune response.Frontiers in immunology · 2023Article
- Bat behavioral immune responses in social contexts: current knowledge and future directions.Frontiers in immunology · 2023Review
- Seasonal challenges of tropical bats in temperate zones.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Revising the paradigm: Are bats really pathogen reservoirs or do they possess an efficient immune system?iScience · 2022Review
- Induced bacterial sickness causes inflammation but not blood oxidative stress in Egyptian fruit bats (Conservation physiology · 2022Article
- A meta-analysis of impacts of immune response and infection on oxidative status in vertebrates.Conservation physiology · 2022Article
- Common Themes in Zoonotic Spillover and Disease Emergence: Lessons Learned from Bat- and Rodent-Borne RNA Viruses.Viruses · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 4 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Along with its many advantages, social roosting imposes a major risk of pathogen transmission. How social animals reduce this risk is poorly documented. We used lipopolysaccharide challenge to imitate bacterial infection in both a captive and a free-living colony of an extremely social, long-lived mammal-the Egyptian fruit bat. We monitored behavioral and physiological responses using an arsenal of methods, including onboard GPS to track foraging, acceleration sensors to monitor movement, infrared video to record social behavior, and blood samples to measure immune markers. Sick-like (immune-challenged) bats exhibited an increased immune response, as well as classic illness symptoms, including fever, weight loss, anorexia, and lethargy. Notably, the bats also exhibited behaviors that would reduce pathogen transfer. They perched alone and appeared to voluntarily isolate themselves from the group by leaving the social cluster, which is extremely atypical for this species. The sick-like individuals in the open colony ceased foraging outdoors for at least two nights, thus reducing transmission to neighboring colonies. Together, these sickness behaviors demonstrate a strong, integrative immune response that promotes recovery of infected individuals while reducing pathogen transmission inside and outside the roost, including spillover events to other species, such as humans.
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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.