Associations between Afrotropical bats, parasites, and microbial symbionts

摘要: Bats are among the most diverse animals on planet and harbor numerous bacterial, viral, eukaryotic symbionts. The interplay between bacterial community composition parasitism in bats is not well understood may have important implications for studies of similar systems. Here we present a comprehensive survey dipteran haemosporidian parasites, characterization gut, oral, skin microbiota Afrotropical bats. We found significant correlation ectoparasite prevalence across four major bat lineages, as links oral microbiome malarial parasitism, suggesting potential mechanism host selection vector-borne disease transmission Mirroring recent host-microbiome co-speciation mammals, find weak chiropteran phylogenetic distances dissimilarity three anatomical sites, that environment more than shared ancestry shaping associated communities.