ReviewBiology letters2023
Robust evidence for bats as reservoir hosts is lacking in most African virus studies: a review and call to optimize sampling and conserve bats.
Review in Biology letters, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- Viral Metagenomic Analysis of Bat Fly Pupae.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Review
- 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
- Host-virus association databases as tools for understanding viral spillover at varying scales.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2026Article
- Exon Targeted Retrieval and Classification Toolbox (ExTRaCT): a gene search pipeline to find APOBEC3 Z-domains in novel bat genomes.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Mismatched and underrepresented: bat-virus diversity and phylogeographic bias in experimental infection studies.Frontiers in immunology · 2026Review
- How many mammal species are there now? Updates and trends in taxonomic, nomenclatural, and geographic knowledge.Journal of mammalogy · 2025Article
- Spaceborne and UAV-LiDAR reveal hammer-headed bat preference for intermediate canopy height and diverse structure in a Central African rainforest.Movement ecology · 2025Article
- Jamaican fruit bats' competence for Ebola but not Marburg virus is driven by intrinsic differences.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Dampened TLR2-mediated Inflammatory Signaling in Bats.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Article
- Molecular determinants of cross-species transmission in emerging viral infections.Microbiology and molecular biology reviews : MMBR · 2024Review
- Article
- Bat species assemblage predicts coronavirus prevalence.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Advances in understanding bat infection dynamics across biological scales.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Review
- 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
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
26 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Africa experiences frequent emerging disease outbreaks among humans, with bats often proposed as zoonotic pathogen hosts. We comprehensively reviewed virus-bat findings from papers published between 1978 and 2020 to evaluate the evidence that African bats are reservoir and/or bridging hosts for viruses that cause human disease. We present data from 162 papers (of 1322) with original findings on (1) numbers and species of bats sampled across bat families and the continent, (2) how bats were selected for study inclusion, (3) if bats were terminally sampled, (4) what types of ecological data, if any, were recorded and (5) which viruses were detected and with what methodology. We propose a scheme for evaluating presumed virus-host relationships by evidence type and quality, using the contrasting available evidence for Orthoebolavirus versus Orthomarburgvirus as an example. We review the wording in abstracts and discussions of all 162 papers, identifying key framing terms, how these refer to findings, and how they might contribute to people's beliefs about bats. We discuss the impact of scientific research communication on public perception and emphasize the need for strategies that minimize human-bat conflict and support bat conservation. Finally, we make recommendations for best practices that will improve virological study metadata.
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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.