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"Ecological and evolutionary insights into the dynamics and prevention of bat viruses" Bats are among the most important and least understood sources of emerging viral threats, including Ebola, SARS, and Nipah. The impacts of bat viruses are currently mitigated reactively, by treating the human or domestic animal hosts after the viruses appear and cause disease. In this talk, I aim to demonstrate how deeper understanding of transmission dynamics in bat reservoirs can empower strategic shifts towards preventing cross-species emergence. First, I will focus on vampire bat-transmitted rabies, an economically important virus affecting humans and livestock across Latin America. Data from a long-term mark-recapture study in Peru will provide ecological explanations for the inability of widespread bat culls to control rabies, and recent field experiments with biomarkers will demonstrate new prospects to prevent human and livestock rabies by applying self-spreading vaccines to wild bats. Next, by linking host and viral genetics with landscape data, I will show that we can forecast viral invasions into currently rabies-free areas, enabling use of life-saving human and animal vaccines prior to outbreaks. Finally, I will discuss a machine learning approach to rapidly identify the unknown animal origins of emerging viruses using signatures of evolutionary associations with specific host groups embedded into viral genomes. These three vignettes illustrate how combining ecological and evolutionary insights can overturn conventional wisdom on disease control and provide new avenues for preventive management of wildlife diseases.

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