Effects of culling vampire bats on the spatial spread and spillover of rabies virus

Controlling pathogen circulation in wildlife reservoirs is notoriously challenging. In Latin America, vampire bats have been culled for decades in hopes of mitigating lethal rabies infections in humans and livestock. Whether culls reduce or exacerbate rabies transmission remains controversial. Using Bayesian state-space models, we show that a 2-year, spatially extensive bat cull in an area of exceptional rabies incidence in Peru failed to reduce spillover to livestock, despite reducing bat population density. Viral whole genome sequencing and phylogeographic analyses further demonstrated that culling before virus arrival slowed viral spatial spread, but reactive culling accelerated spread, suggesting that culling-induced changes in bat dispersal promoted viral invasions. Our findings question the core assumptions of density-dependent transmission and localized viral maintenance that underlie culling bats as a rabies prevention strategy and provide an epidemiological and evolutionary framework to understand the outcomes of interventions in complex wildlife disease systems.

Automated summary

Controlling pathogen circulation in wildlife reservoirs is difficult, especially in the case of vampire bats in Latin America, which carry deadly rabies infections. Culling bats has been attempted to mitigate the spread of rabies but its effectiveness is debated. A 2-year bat culling in Peru, despite reducing bat population density, failed to reduce transmission to livestock. The study suggests that culls may promote viral invasions through changes in bat dispersal, challenging the assumptions of density-dependent transmission and localized viral maintenance.