A meta-analysis exploring associations between habitat degradation and Neotropical bat virus prevalence and seroprevalence

Habitat degradation can increase zoonotic disease risks by altering
infection dynamics in wildlife and increasing wildlife–human interactions.
Bats are an important taxonomic group to consider these effects, because
they harbour many relevant zoonotic viruses and have species- and
context-dependent responses to degradation that could affect zoonotic
virus dynamics. Yet our understanding of the associations between habitat
degradation and bat virus prevalence and seroprevalence are limited to a
small number of studies, which often differ in the bats or viruses
sampled, the study region, and methodology. To develop a broad
understanding of the associations between bat viruses and habitat
degradation, we conducted an initial phylogenetic meta-analysis that
combines published prevalence and seroprevalence (“(sero)prevalence”) with
remote-sensing habitat degradation data. Our dataset includes 588 unique
records of (sero)prevalence across 16 studies, 64 bat species, and five
virus families. We quantified the overall strength and direction of the
relationship between habitat degradation and bat virus outcomes and tested
how this relationship is moderated by the time between habitat degradation
and bat sampling and by ecological traits of bat hosts while controlling
for phylogenetic nonindependence among bat species. We found no effect of
degradation on prevalence overall, although a weak effect may exist when
forest loss occurs the year prior to bat sampling. In contrast, we
detected a negative but weak association between degradation and
seroprevalence overall that was strengthened when forest loss occurred the
year prior to bat sampling. No bat traits that we investigated interacted
with habitat degradation to impact virus outcomes, suggesting observed
trends are independent of these traits. Biases in our initial dataset
highlight opportunities for future work; prevalence was highly
zero-inflated, and seroprevalence was dominated by Desmodus rotundus and
rabies virus. These findings and subsequent analyses will improve our
understanding of how global change affects host–pathogen dynamics.