The coevolutionary mosaic of bat betacoronavirus emergence risk

Abstract

Pathogen evolution is one of the least predictable components of disease emergence, particularly in nature. Here, building on principles established by the geographic mosaic theory of coevolution, we develop a quantitative, spatially-explicit framework for mapping the evolutionary risk of viral emergence. Driven by interest in diseases like SARS, MERS, and COVID-19, we examine the global biogeography of bat-origin betacoronaviruses, and find that coevolutionary principles suggest geographies of risk that are distinct from the hotspots and coldspots of host richness. Further, our framework helps explain patterns like a unique pool of merbecoviruses in the Neotropics, a recently-discovered lineage of divergent nobecoviruses in Madagascar, and--most importantly--hotspots of diversification in southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East that correspond to the site of previous zoonotic emergence events. Our framework may help identify hotspots of future risk that have also been previously overlooked, like west Africa and the Indian subcontinent, and may more broadly help researchers understand how host ecology shapes the evolution and diversity of pandemic threats.

Network embedding unveils the hidden interactions in the mammalian virome

“…Comparing the uniqueness of the viral community composition based on host spatial distribution before and after imputation reveals an undocumented hotspot of unique host-virus associations in the Amazon ( Figure 3 ). This finding tracks with other recent work on the biogeography of bat coronaviruses, 27 , 28 which has suggested that betacoronaviruses followed divergent trajectories of cospeciation with their hosts after some bat families became isolated in the New World. Our predictions suggest that this might be a broader pattern that shaped the biogeography of mammal viruses, and although the Amazon may not harbor disproportionate viral richness, it might be home to more unusual (and currently unknown) branches of viral evolution.…”

Strategic vaccine stockpiles for regional epidemics of emerging viruses: a geospatial modeling framework

“…Although MERS-like coronaviruses are found in bats worldwide (Anthony et al 2017;Olival et al 2020;Munoz et al 2022), the origin of MERS-CoV appears to have been a single bat-to-camel transmission event; the virus has since jumped from camels to humans at least 200 times (Ramshaw et al 2019), almost exclusively in livestock keeper populations. Although MERS-CoV circulates in camels throughout northern Africa, the Arabian peninsula, and even southern Asia (Dighe et al 2019), reported spillover events have historically been confined to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates (Ramshaw et al 2019).…”