From bats to humans: the social, ecological and biological dynamics of pathogen spillover

Bats are increasingly being recognised as reservoir hosts for significant human pathogens: within the past 15 years, bats have been identified as the source of Hendra, Nipah, SARS, Ebola and Marburg viruses, amongst others, all of which are RNA viruses and all of which cause incurable diseases in humans with high case fatality rates. Bats also are the reservoir hosts of lyssaviruses, the rabies family of viruses, which are also zoonotic RNA viruses. In addition to being responsible for sporadic, but frequent, fatal human disease outbreaks on an annual or semi-annual basis, there is some evidence of bat RNA virus adaptations to the human host; in particular, henipaviruses have been highlighted as a possible future pandemic threat to public health. Although progress has been made on diagnostic techniques and on identifying the source wildlife species and populations of these viruses, the factors driving or facilitating zoonotic emergence, including bat to human transmission, are little understood. These factors are likely to be multiple, interrelated and complex, involving aspects of pathogen biology, host ecology and human behaviour. The catalyst grant will explore this multifaceted complexity through four key questions: the transmission dynamics of RNA viruses in identified bat populations; the population dynamics and behaviours of these bats; the dynamics of infection spillover from bats to humans and the dynamics of medical diagnosis and response. This investigation is necessarily multi-disciplinary and is divided into two phases. The first involves a review of the literature and the identification of missing disciplines and collaborators needed to build an integrative conceptual framework linking environmental and social dimensions with the modelling of infection dynamics. The second phase involves jointly-written literature reviews and critiques, preparatory work on new theoretical research questions and consultations with end-users in order to develop a comprehensive and holistic research consortium proposal. We will, therefore, use this catalyst grant to build a world-class multidisciplinary consortium of scientists, integrating pre-existing and new research activities in West Africa, South Asia and Australia, to develop a strong interdisciplinary research programme to investigate bat-human pathogen dynamics. This newly-formed consortium will be well positioned to advance the intellectual boundaries of current thinking on wildlife-to-human virus transmission by asking new theoretical, multi-disciplinary questions that more closely address social, environmental and medical interrelationships and complex realities.