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Viral zoonotic risk is homogenous among taxonomic orders of mammalian and avian reservoir hosts

The notion that certain animal groups disproportionately maintain and transmit viruses to humans due to broad-scale differences in ecology, life history, and physiology currently influences global health surveillance and research in disease ecology, virology, and immunology. To directly test whether...

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Autores principales: Mollentze, Nardus, Streicker, Daniel G.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: National Academy of Sciences 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7196766/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32284401
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1919176117
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author Mollentze, Nardus
Streicker, Daniel G.
author_facet Mollentze, Nardus
Streicker, Daniel G.
author_sort Mollentze, Nardus
collection PubMed
description The notion that certain animal groups disproportionately maintain and transmit viruses to humans due to broad-scale differences in ecology, life history, and physiology currently influences global health surveillance and research in disease ecology, virology, and immunology. To directly test whether such “special reservoirs” of zoonoses exist, we used literature searches to construct the largest existing dataset of virus–reservoir relationships, consisting of the avian and mammalian reservoir hosts of 415 RNA and DNA viruses along with their histories of human infection. Reservoir host effects on the propensity of viruses to have been reported as infecting humans were rare and when present were restricted to one or two viral families. The data instead support a largely host-neutral explanation for the distribution of human-infecting viruses across the animal orders studied. After controlling for higher baseline viral richness in mammals versus birds, the observed number of zoonoses per animal order increased as a function of their species richness. Animal orders of established importance as zoonotic reservoirs including bats and rodents were unexceptional, maintaining numbers of zoonoses that closely matched expectations for mammalian groups of their size. Our findings show that variation in the frequency of zoonoses among animal orders can be explained without invoking special ecological or immunological relationships between hosts and viruses, pointing to a need to reconsider current approaches aimed at finding and predicting novel zoonoses.
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spelling pubmed-71967662020-05-06 Viral zoonotic risk is homogenous among taxonomic orders of mammalian and avian reservoir hosts Mollentze, Nardus Streicker, Daniel G. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Biological Sciences The notion that certain animal groups disproportionately maintain and transmit viruses to humans due to broad-scale differences in ecology, life history, and physiology currently influences global health surveillance and research in disease ecology, virology, and immunology. To directly test whether such “special reservoirs” of zoonoses exist, we used literature searches to construct the largest existing dataset of virus–reservoir relationships, consisting of the avian and mammalian reservoir hosts of 415 RNA and DNA viruses along with their histories of human infection. Reservoir host effects on the propensity of viruses to have been reported as infecting humans were rare and when present were restricted to one or two viral families. The data instead support a largely host-neutral explanation for the distribution of human-infecting viruses across the animal orders studied. After controlling for higher baseline viral richness in mammals versus birds, the observed number of zoonoses per animal order increased as a function of their species richness. Animal orders of established importance as zoonotic reservoirs including bats and rodents were unexceptional, maintaining numbers of zoonoses that closely matched expectations for mammalian groups of their size. Our findings show that variation in the frequency of zoonoses among animal orders can be explained without invoking special ecological or immunological relationships between hosts and viruses, pointing to a need to reconsider current approaches aimed at finding and predicting novel zoonoses. National Academy of Sciences 2020-04-28 2020-04-13 /pmc/articles/PMC7196766/ /pubmed/32284401 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1919176117 Text en Copyright © 2020 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Biological Sciences
Mollentze, Nardus
Streicker, Daniel G.
Viral zoonotic risk is homogenous among taxonomic orders of mammalian and avian reservoir hosts
title Viral zoonotic risk is homogenous among taxonomic orders of mammalian and avian reservoir hosts
title_full Viral zoonotic risk is homogenous among taxonomic orders of mammalian and avian reservoir hosts
title_fullStr Viral zoonotic risk is homogenous among taxonomic orders of mammalian and avian reservoir hosts
title_full_unstemmed Viral zoonotic risk is homogenous among taxonomic orders of mammalian and avian reservoir hosts
title_short Viral zoonotic risk is homogenous among taxonomic orders of mammalian and avian reservoir hosts
title_sort viral zoonotic risk is homogenous among taxonomic orders of mammalian and avian reservoir hosts
topic Biological Sciences
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7196766/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32284401
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1919176117
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