Demographic and environmental drivers of metagenomic viral diversity in vampire bats

• DOI: 10.1111/mec.15250
• Publication Date: 2019-09-28T03:50:42Z
• Authors: Laura M. Bergner; Richard J. Orton; Julio A. Benavides; Daniel J. Becker; Carlos Tello; Roman Biek; Daniel G. Streicker
• Keywords: Community

Viruses infect all forms of life and play critical roles as agents disease, drivers biochemical cycles sources genetic diversity for their hosts. Our understanding viral derives primarily from comparisons among host species, precluding insight into how intraspecific variation in ecology affects communities or predictable are across populations. Here we test spatial, demographic environmental hypotheses explaining richness community composition populations common vampire bats, which occur diverse habitats North, Central South America. We demonstrate marked that was not consistently predicted by a null model declining similarity with increasing spatial distances separating also find no evidence larger bat colonies greater diversity. Instead, follows an elevational gradient, is enriched juvenile-biased age structure, declines local anthropogenic food resources measured livestock density. results establish the value linking modern influx metagenomic sequence data comparative ecology, reveal snapshot views unlikely to be representative at species level, affirm existing ecological theories link only single pathogen dynamics but communities.