First description of a mobatvirus (Hantaviridae) in the Amazon region

Abstract

From 1988-2023, Pará accounted for the highest proportion of deforestation among all states in the Brazilian Amazon. Specifically, 57.20 % of the territory in the Santa Bárbara municipality was deforested as of 2023. Since 2017, the Hantaviridae family has included viruses identified in nonrodent vertebrates, such as mobatviruses (from moles and bats). In the current metagenomic analysis of a pool of multiple organs of a Carollia brevicauda bat, we obtained sequences for three segments of the previously described Buritiense virus (BURV); to date, only the L segment had been sequenced for this mobatvirus. This study provides the first description of BURV in the Amazon region and provides information on the S and M segments of the virus. These findings corroborate the presence of BURV in Brazil in an area far from the site of the first detection and in another bat species.

Keywords: Amazon rainforest; Bats; Deforestation; Hantaviridae; Mobatvirus.

Fig. 1

The red dots mark the two municipalities where BURV was detected: Santa Bárbara do Pará/Pará (new detection) and Timon/Maranhão (previous detection). Brown diamonds represent the municipalities of origin of the 353 nt sequences, and black dots represent the state capitals.

Fig. 2

Maximum likelihood phylogenetic tree based on the amino acid alignment of the S, M and L segments of BURV and the other 35 hantaviruses. The best amino acid substitution model defined by IQ-TREE was the Q.insect+I + G4, Q.insect+R3 and Q.insect+I + R5 for the S, M and L segments, respectively. Branches with blue tips represent orthohantaviruses, yellow tips represent thottimviruses, and green tips represent mobatviruses. The BURV is highlighted in red.