Fruit bats as a natural reservoir of zoonotic viruses

Guangle Jia; Ying Zhang; Tinghe Wu; Shuyi Zhang; Yinan Wang

doi:10.1007/BF03183931

Fruit bats as a natural reservoir of zoonotic viruses

Chin Sci Bull. 2003;48(12):1179-1182. doi: 10.1007/BF03183931.

Authors

Guangle Jia¹, Ying Zhang², Tinghe Wu¹, Shuyi Zhang¹, Yinan Wang¹

Affiliations

¹ 1Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100080 Beijing, China.
² 2Shanxi Agricultural University, 030801 Taigu, China.

Abstract

As a natural reservoir of manifold zoonotic viruses, fruit bats have been involved in at least three emerging zoonoses in recent years. This paper aims to introduce the epidemiological characteristics of these diseases emerged in the Australasian region between 1994 and 1999, transmission pathways of the newly discovered viruses and the relationship between the changed entironment of fruit bats and occurrences of these emerging diseases and provide a clue for the epidemiological investigations of SARS.

Keywords: fruit bat; natural reservoir; zoonotic virus.