Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2018 Oct 9;10(10):549.
doi: 10.3390/v10100549.

Ebola Virus Maintenance: If Not (Only) Bats, What Else?

Alexandre Caron  1   2   3 , Mathieu Bourgarel  4   5 , Julien Cappelle  6   7   8 , Florian Liégeois  9 , Hélène M De Nys  10   11   12 , François Roger  13   14
Affiliations
Review

Ebola Virus Maintenance: If Not (Only) Bats, What Else?

Alexandre Caron et al. Viruses. .

Abstract

The maintenance mechanisms of ebolaviruses in African forest ecosystems are still unknown, but indirect evidences point at the involvement of some bat species. Despite intense research, the main bat-maintenance hypothesis has not been confirmed yet. The alternative hypotheses of a non-bat maintenance host or a maintenance community including, or not, several bat and other species, deserves more investigation. However, African forest ecosystems host a large biodiversity and abound in potential maintenance hosts. How does one puzzle out? Since recent studies have revealed that several bat species have been exposed to ebolaviruses, the common denominator to these hypotheses is that within the epidemiological cycle, some bats species must be exposed to the viruses and infected by these potential alternative hosts. Under this constraint, and given the peculiar ecology of bats (roosting behaviour, habitat utilisation, and flight mode), we review the hosts and transmission pathways that can lead to bat exposure and infection to ebolaviruses. In contrast to the capacity of bats to transmit ebolaviruses and other pathogens to many hosts, our results indicate that only a limited number of hosts and pathways can lead to the transmission of ebolaviruses to bats, and that the alternative maintenance host, if it exists, must be amongst them. A list of these pathways is provided, along with protocols to prioritise and investigate these alternative hypotheses. In conclusion, taking into account the ecology of bats and their known involvement in ebolaviruses ecology drastically reduces the list of potential alternative maintenance hosts for ebolaviruses. Understanding the natural history of ebolaviruses is a health priority, and investigating these alternative hypotheses could complete the current effort focused on the role of bats.

Keywords: Africa; bat; community ecology; ebola virus; filovirus; maintenance host; transmission pathways.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

No conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Potential maintenance mechanisms of ebolaviruses in wildlife, according to current knowledge. Circles (plain or dotted) indicate a maintenance function play by the host(s); arrows represent infectious transmission pathways between hosts. Humans, non-human primates, and duikers are examples of known non-maintenance hosts, exposed occasionally to ebolavirus directly or indirectly through the main maintenance host. (A1) Main maintenance hypothesis: there is one bat species maintaining each ebolavirus alone. Currently this is logically the most investigated hypothesis given the available data, and represents the maintenance mechanism for another filovirus, the Marburg virus, as currently understood. (A2) Several bat species are needed to create a maintenance community for Zaire ebolavirus (EBOV); each bat species cannot complete EBOV maintenance alone, as it requires interactions with the other species. (B) Alternate non-bat maintenance host hypothesis: if it exists, it is known that it can transmit ebolaviruses to some bat species. In this article, we review the potential hosts and associated transmission pathways that link this host to bat species (red arrow). (C) The maintenance community hypothesis, in which several hosts are needed to maintain ebolaviruses (ellipses represent different scenarios of community maintenance). This could be one or more alternative hosts involving possibly bat species. By definition, if such an alternative host exists, there are infectious transmission pathways from this host towards bats that are reviewed here (red arrows).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

  • Investigating the zoonotic origin of the West African Ebola epidemic.
    Marí Saéz A, Weiss S, Nowak K, Lapeyre V, Zimmermann F, Düx A, Kühl HS, Kaba M, Regnaut S, Merkel K, Sachse A, Thiesen U, Villányi L, Boesch C, Dabrowski PW, Radonić A, Nitsche A, Leendertz SA, Petterson S, Becker S, Krähling V, Couacy-Hymann E, Akoua-Koffi C, Weber N, Schaade L, Fahr J, Borchert M, Gogarten JF, Calvignac-Spencer S, Leendertz FH. Marí Saéz A, et al. EMBO Mol Med. 2015 Jan;7(1):17-23. doi: 10.15252/emmm.201404792. EMBO Mol Med. 2015. PMID: 25550396 Free PMC article.
  • Experimental Inoculation of Egyptian Rousette Bats (Rousettus aegyptiacus) with Viruses of the Ebolavirus and Marburgvirus Genera.
    Jones ME, Schuh AJ, Amman BR, Sealy TK, Zaki SR, Nichol ST, Towner JS. Jones ME, et al. Viruses. 2015 Jun 25;7(7):3420-42. doi: 10.3390/v7072779. Viruses. 2015. PMID: 26120867 Free PMC article.
  • [Bats and Viruses: complex relationships].
    Rodhain F. Rodhain F. Bull Soc Pathol Exot. 2015 Oct;108(4):272-89. doi: 10.1007/s13149-015-0448-z. Epub 2015 Sep 1. Bull Soc Pathol Exot. 2015. PMID: 26330152 Free PMC article. Review.
  • Fruit bats as reservoirs of Ebola virus.
    Leroy EM, Kumulungui B, Pourrut X, Rouquet P, Hassanin A, Yaba P, Délicat A, Paweska JT, Gonzalez JP, Swanepoel R. Leroy EM, et al. Nature. 2005 Dec 1;438(7068):575-6. doi: 10.1038/438575a. Nature. 2005. PMID: 16319873
  • Ebolavirus and other filoviruses.
    Gonzalez JP, Pourrut X, Leroy E. Gonzalez JP, et al. Curr Top Microbiol Immunol. 2007;315:363-87. doi: 10.1007/978-3-540-70962-6_15. Curr Top Microbiol Immunol. 2007. PMID: 17848072 Free PMC article. Review.
See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Kuhn J.H., Becker S., Ebihara H., Geisbert T.W., Johnson K.M., Kawaoka Y., Lipkin W.I., Negredo A.I., Netesov S.V., Nichol S.T., et al. Proposal for a revised taxonomy of the family filoviridae: Classification, names of taxa and viruses, and virus abbreviations. Arch. Virol. 2010;155:2083–2103. doi: 10.1007/s00705-010-0814-x. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Gonzalez J.P., Pourrut X., Leroy E. Ebolavirus and other filoviruses. In: Childs J.E., Mackenzie J.S., Richt J.A., editors. Wildlife and Emerging Zoonotic Diseases: The Biology, Circumstances and Consequences of Cross-Species Transmission. Springer; Heidelberg, Germany: New York, NY, USA: 2007. pp. 363–388.
    1. Pourrut X., Kumulungui B., Wittmann T., Moussavou G., Delicat A., Yaba P., Nkoghe D., Gonzalez J.P., Leroy E.M. The natural history of ebola virus in africa. Microbes Infect. 2005;7:1005–1014. doi: 10.1016/j.micinf.2005.04.006. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Lau M.S., Dalziel B.D., Funk S., McClelland A., Tiffany A., Riley S., Metcalf C.J., Grenfell B.T. Spatial and temporal dynamics of superspreading events in the 2014–2015 west africa ebola epidemic. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 2017;114:2337–2342. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1614595114. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Baize S., Pannetier D., Oestereich L., Rieger T., Koivogui L., Magassouba N., Soropogui B., Sow M.S., Keita S., De Clerck H., et al. Emergence of zaire ebola virus disease in guinea. N. Engl. J. Med. 2014;371:1418–1425. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1404505. - DOI - PubMed

Publication types