Approximately 75% of emerging infectious diseases are zoonoses. The rate of emergence of zoonotic viruses appears to be increasing and/or our ability to detect new viruses is improving. Bats are being increasingly recognised as an important reservoir of zoonotic viruses of different families, including SARS coronavirus, Nipah virus, Hendra virus and Ebola virus. Several recent studies hypothesized that bats, an ancient group of flying mammals, are the major reservoir of several important RNA virus families from which most (if not all) other known mammalian viruses of livestock animals and human were derived. As the only flying mammal on earh, bats have several unique biological features distinguishing them from all other mammals. Recent genomics studies revealed that the adaptation of flight is linked to bat’s ability to live longer and harbouring a large number of viruses without suffering from diseases.
There has been a very rapid increase in the number of publication in the 2000s. This was mainly due to the discovery of bats as reservoir of major zoonotic viruses such as Henipavirus, SARS virus and Ebola/Marburg viruses in the 1990s, which triggered a new wave of research interests into bats as a reservoir of viruses.
In addition to the large number of bat viruses discovered in the last two decades, the research interest has also expanded to the host biology, especially in the area of immunology and genomics marked by the recent publication of the two bat genomes in Science (Zhang et al. 203 Science, 339: 456-460) as a cover story.
It is unfortunate that for such an important and rapidly expanding area of research, there has been no publication of any dedicated book on this topic. The last book published in this area is a monogram titled "Virus Infections in Bats" in 1974 which is almost 4 decades ago. This is the time to produce a book dedicated to this important topic which has witnessed tremendous growth in the last four decades.
The aim of this project is to provide a most updated review on our knowledge in the area of bat biology and bats as a host of major zoonotic viruses. The book will cover a wide range of topics from bat biology, bat immunology, bat genomics to pathogen discovery and specific chapters on each of the major bat-borne virus families. The book will also provide a chapter remarking on the future direction of research in this important and rapidly growing area.
