Ecological and evolutionary drivers of hemoplasma infection and genotype sharing in a Neotropical bat community

Most emerging pathogens can infect multiple species, underscoring the importance of understanding the ecological and evolutionary factors that allow some hosts to harbor greater infection prevalence and share pathogens with other species. However, our understanding of pathogen jumps is primarily based around viruses, despite bacteria accounting for the greatest proportion of zoonoses. Because bacterial pathogens in bats (Order: Chiroptera) can have conservation and human health consequences, studies that examine the ecological and evolutionary drivers of bacterial prevalence and barriers to pathogen sharing are crucially needed. We here studied hemotropic Mycoplasma spp. (i.e., hemoplasmas) across a species-rich bat community in Belize over two years. Across 469 bats spanning 33 species, half of individuals and two-thirds of species were hemoplasma positive. Infection prevalence was higher for males and for species with larger body mass and colony sizes. Hemoplasmas displayed high genet...