Human disturbance increases coronavirus prevalence in bats

Human land modification is a known driver of animal-to-human transmission of infectious agents (zoonotic spillover). Infection prevalence in the reservoir is a key predictor of spillover, but landscape-level associations between the intensity of land modification and infection rates in wildlife remain largely untested. Bat-borne coronaviruses have caused three major disease outbreaks in humans: severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome, and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). We statistically link high -resolution land modification data with bat coronavirus surveillance records and show that coronavirus preva-lence significantly increases with the intensity of human impact across all climates and levels of background biodiversity. The most significant contributors to the overall human impact are agriculture, deforestation, and mining. Regions of high predicted bat coronavirus prevalence coincide with global disease hotspots, sug-gesting that infection prevalence in wildlife may be an important factor underlying links between human land modification and zoonotic disease emergence.

Automated summary

Human land modification significantly increases the prevalence of bat-borne coronaviruses, with agriculture, deforestation, and mining being the most significant contributors to the overall impact. This suggests that infection prevalence in wildlife is an important factor underlying the links between human land modification and zoonotic disease emergence.