Landmark study reveals ‘spillover’ mechanism for the rare but deadly Hendra virus.
Specifically, the researchers found that clusters of Hendra virus spillovers occur following years in which the bats experience food stress. And these food shortages typically follow years with a strong El Niño, a climatic phenomenon in the tropical Pacific Ocean that is often associated with drought along eastern Australia. But if the trees the bats rely on for food during the winter have a large flowering event the year after there’s been a food shortage, there are no spillovers.
The study is “absolutely fantastic,” says Sarah Cleaveland, a veterinarian and infectious-disease ecologist at the University of Glasgow, UK. “What’s so exciting about it is that it has led directly to solutions.” Cleaveland says the study’s approach of looking at the impact of climate, environment, nutritional stress and bat ecology together could bring new insights to the study of other pathogens, including Nipah and Ebola, and their viral families.
Over the course of the study, the team noticed significant changes in the bats’ behaviour. The flying foxes went from having predominantly nomadic lifestyles — moving in large groups from one native forest to the other in search of nectar — to settling in small groups in urban and agricultural areas, bringing the bats closer to where horses and people live. The number of occupied bat roosts in general has trebled since the early 2000s to around 320 in 2020.
Then something unexpected happened. An El Niño occurred in 2018 followed by a drought in 2019, suggesting that 2020 should also have been a spillover year. But there was only one event in May and none has been detected since. “We threw all the cards back up into the air and looked carefully at all the other elements of our hypothesis,” says Eby.
The researchers suggest that these mass migrations take the bats away from horses. They propose that by restoring the habitats of those handful of species that flower in winter, fewer spillovers in horses, and potentially in people, would occur. And by restoring the habitats of other animals that host dangerous pathogens, “maybe we can prevent the next pandemic,” says Plowright.
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