ArticlePloS one2022
Seasonal shedding of coronavirus by straw-colored fruit bats at urban roosts in Africa.
Article in PloS one, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- Zoonotic disease knowledge, attitudes, and livestock biosecurity practices among community members in Ada East District, Ghana: a concurrent mixed-methods study.One health outlook · 2026Article
- Detection and genetic characterization of alphacoronaviruses in co-roosting bat species, southeastern Kenya.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2025Article
- Spatial Distribution of Straw-Colored Fruit Bats (Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Cross-neutralising antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in sera from straw-coloured fruit bats (Eidolon helvum) in Nigeria.BMC veterinary research · 2025Article
- Detection of an Alphacoronavirus in a Brazilian Bat (Molossus sp.).Journal of molecular evolution · 2025Article
- A global-scale dataset of bat viral detection suggests that pregnancy reduces viral shedding.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Differential prevalence and risk factors for infection with coronaviruses in bats collected from Yunnan Province, China.One health (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2024Article
- Ecological and Reproductive Cycles Drive Henipavirus Seroprevalence in the African Straw-Coloured Fruit Bat (Ecology and evolution · 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
- Using drivers and transmission pathways to identify SARS-like coronavirus spillover risk hotspots.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Article
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Authors and funding
12 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The straw-colored fruit bat (Eidolon helvum) is a pteropodid whose conservation is crucial for maintaining functional connectivity of plant populations in tropical Africa. Land conversion has pushed this species to adapt to roosting in urban centers across its range. These colonies often host millions of individuals, creating intensive human-bat contact interfaces that could facilitate the spillover of coronaviruses shed by these bats. A better understanding of coronavirus dynamics in these roosts is needed to identify peak times of exposure risk in order to propose evidence-based management that supports safe human-bat coexistence, as well as the conservation of this chiropteran. We studied the temporal patterns of coronavirus shedding in E. helvum, by testing thousands of longitudinally-collected fecal samples from two spatially distant urban roosts in Ghana and Tanzania. Shedding of coronaviruses peaked during the second part of pup weaning in both roosts. Assuming that coronavirus shedding is directly related to spillover risk, our results indicate that exposure mitigation should target reducing contact between people and E. helvum roosts during the pup "weaning" period. This recommendation can be applied across the many highly-populated urban sites occupied by E. helvum across Africa.
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