Emerging henipaviruses and flying foxes - Conservation and management perspectives

Abstract

Wildlife populations are affected by a series of emerging diseases, some of which pose a significant threat to their conservation. They can also be reservoirs of pathogens that threaten domestic animal and human health. In this paper, we review the ecology of two viruses that have caused significant disease in domestic animals and humans and are carried by wild fruit bats in Asia and Australia. The first, Hendra virus, has caused disease in horses and/or humans in Australia every five years since it first emerged in 1994. Nipah virus has caused a major outbreak of disease in pigs and humans in Malaysia in the late 1990s and has also caused human mortalities in Bangladesh annually since 2001. Increased knowledge of fruit bat population dynamics and disease ecology will help improve our understanding of processes driving the emergence of diseases from bats. For this, a transdisciplinary approach is required to develop appropriate host management strategies that both maximise the conservation of bat populations as well as minimise the risk of disease outbreaks in domestic animals and humans.

Keywords: Bat; Emerging; Hendra; Nipah; Pteropus.

Fig. 1

World distribution of flying foxes (Genus Pteropus) (from Hall and Richards (2000)). In this paper the term ‘flying fox’ refers only to members of the genus Pteropus, although other genera, e.g. Acerodon, are also considered flying foxes by some authors.

Fig. 2

A phylogenetic representation of the family Paramyxoviridae (from Chua et al., 2002). A phylogenetic tree based on the deduced amino acid sequences of the matrix protein of members of the family Paramyxoviridae. Branch lengths represent relative evolutionary distances. NDV, Newcastle disease; CDV, canine distemper virus; MeV, measles virus; TPMV, Tupaia Paramyxovirus; HeV, Hendra virus; NiV, Nipah virus; HPIV3, human parainfluenza virus 3; HPIV1, human parainfluenza virus 1; SeV, Sendai virus; SV5, Simian virus 5; HPIV2, human parainfluenza virus 2; SV41, Simian virus 41; HPIV4a, human parainfluenza virus 4a; HPIV4b, human parainfluenza virus 4b; TiV, Tioman virus; MenV, Menangle virus; PoRV, porcine rubulavirus; MuV, mumps virus.