Bats and ectoparasites: exploring a hidden link in zoonotic disease transmission.

Bats are increasingly in the focus of disease surveillance studies as they harbor pathogens that can cause severe human disease. In other host groups, ectoparasitic arthropods play an important role in transmitting pathogens to humans. Nevertheless, we currently know little about the role of bat-associated ectoparasites in pathogen transmission, not only between bats but also to humans and other species, even though some of these parasites occasionally feed on humans and harbor potentially zoonotic organisms.

Bat-associated ticks as a potential link for vector-borne pathogen transmission between bats and other animals.

Background: Potentially zoonotic pathogens have been previously detected in bat-associated ticks, but their role in disease transmission and their frequency of feeding on non-bat hosts is poorly known.

Methodology/principal Findings: We used molecular blood meal analysis to reveal feeding patterns of the bat-associated tick species Ixodes ariadnae, I. simplex, and I.

Detection and genetic characterization of circoviruses in more than 80 bat species from eight countries on four continents.

Several bat-associated circoviruses and circular rep-encoding single-stranded DNA (CRESS DNA) viruses have been described, but the exact diversity and host species of these viruses are often unknown. Our goal was to describe the diversity of bat-associated circoviruses and cirliviruses, thus, 424 bat samples from more than 80 species were collected on four continents. The samples were screened for circoviruses using PCR and the resulting amino acid sequences were subjected to phylogenetic analysis.