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Vampire bats might soon establish themselves in the US, potentially bringing along an ancient pathogen—the rabies virus.
Recognized as carriers of rabies, an illness with historically high mortality rates and hailed as one of humanity’s oldest pathogens dating back 3,000 years, these bats, typically found in Mexico, Central, and South America, are on the move. They could find a suitable habitat in the US within the next 27 years.
Lead author Paige Van de Vuurst, a doctoral student in Virginia Tech’s Translational Biology, Medicine, and Health Graduate Program, explained, “Our research indicates that the range of vampire bats has shifted northward over time due to past climate changes, coinciding with an increase in rabies cases across numerous Latin American nations.”
The study, published in the journal Ecography, concluded that vampire bats are extending their territory in pursuit of more consistent and temperate climates due to changing seasonality—variations in temperature between the coldest and warmest seasons.
The research team collected over 70 bat species samples while traversing Colombia to track and analyze the bats. They specifically investigated how climate change impacted the distributional ecology of the common vampire bat species, Desmodus rotundus, throughout the last century.
Their retrospective analysis uncovered a direct correlation between climate shifts and the northern expansion of D. rotundus distribution in North America. Additionally, they noted a decrease in temperature fluctuations at locations where D. rotundus were captured over the last century, indicating a more stable, less seasonal climate in recent years.
Detailing their findings in the paper, the researchers emphasized, “Our results reveal a link between the spread of D. rotundus and an increase in rabies virus transmission from these bats to cattle, particularly in the last 50 years of our 120-year study period.” They underscored that the vampire bat rabies system illustrates the repercussions of climate change on wildlife-livestock-human interfaces, demonstrating how global changes influence these interconnected systems and contribute to heightened disease emergence.
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