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...多数新发病原体可感染多种宿主物种，这凸显了厘清生态与进化驱动因素的重要性——此类因素可使部分宿主维持更高的感染流行率，并实现与其他物种的病原体共享。然而，尽管细菌在人畜共患病中占比最高，但当前学界对病原体跨宿主传播的认知主要基于病毒类病原体。鉴于翼手目（Chiroptera）蝙蝠携带的细菌性病原可对物种保护与人类健康造成潜在影响，因此亟需开展相关研究，以解析细菌感染流行率的生态与进化驱动机制，以及阻碍病原体跨物种共享的关键因素。本研究历时两年，对伯利兹一处物种丰富的蝙蝠群落开展了嗜血性支原体属（hemotropic Mycoplasma spp.，即血原体）的调查研究。本次研究共纳入33个物种的469只蝙蝠，其中半数个体与三分之二的物种呈血原体检测阳性。感染流行率在雄性个体以及体型更大、种群规模更大的蝙蝠物种中显著更高。血原体展现出较高的遗传...