Abstract
Bats host several emerging viruses, including filoviruses, coronaviruses, and paramyxoviruses. Land-use change and urbanisation increasingly bring bat species into closer contact with humans, thereby potentially increasing opportunities for viral exposure at the human-bat interface. Understanding viral dynamics in natural bat hosts is essential for assessing emergence risks. This study spanned 12 months of longitudinal virus surveillance in two molossid bat species (genus Mops) that roosted in close association with humans within two contrasting land-use systems in northeastern Eswatini. Bats were tested for filovirus, coronavirus, and paramyxovirus viral RNA with additional serosurveillance for filoviruses. In addition to identifying novel paramyxovirus diversity, the ongoing circulation of molossid-associated alphacoronaviruses was also confirmed. Coronavirus peak shedding was observed during spring (July-September), with shedding adults consistently displaying lower forearm-mass indices as compared to non-shedding bats. Recapture analysis showed that alphacoronavirus RNA was no longer detectable in most bats within a month, although a small number of individuals remained PCR-positive after several months, consistent with intermittent shedding or reinfection. While no filovirus RNA was detected, 29.5% (95% CI: 26.1–33.1%) of bats were sero-reactive with Bombali virus glycoprotein. These findings demonstrate the value of longitudinal wildlife surveillance for understanding seasonal viral dynamics, identifying periods of increased opportunities for human exposure and informing evidence-based surveillance at the human-bat interface.
Similar content being viewed by others
Viral maintenance and excretion dynamics of coronaviruses within an Egyptian rousette fruit bat maternal colony: considerations for spillover
Comparative virome analysis of individual shedding routes of Miniopterus phillipsi bats inhabiting the Wavul Galge cave, Sri Lanka
Longitudinal monitoring in Cambodia suggests higher circulation of alpha and betacoronaviruses in juvenile and immature bats of three species
Acknowledgements
We thank the staff of the Centre for Viral Zoonoses, University of Pretoria, for technical assistance with sample extraction.
Funding
This work was also supported in part by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa: the DSI-NRF South African Research Chair held by WM Grant No. 219114353. The financial assistance of the National Research Foundation (NRF) towards this research is hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at, are those of the authors and are not necessarily to be attributed to the NRF. We acknowledge the DNA Sanger sequencing facility, Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, University of Pretoria, for DNA sequencing. This research was funded by the Department of the Defense, Defense Threat Reduction Agency (HDTRA1-20-1-0025). The content of the information does not necessarily reflect the position or the policy of the federal government and no official endorsement should be inferred.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary Information
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Supplementary Material 1 (download XLSX )
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Reprints and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Geldenhuys, M., Ndzinisa, L.L., de Vries, M. et al. Longitudinal surveillance of synanthropic molossid bats reveals viral diversity and temporal patterns at the human–bat interface.
Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-67859-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-67859-2
Keywords
- Eswatini
- Longitudinal
- Alphacoronaviruses
- Orthoparamyxoviruses
- Filoviruses
- Land-use systems
- Mops
Source: Ecology - nature.com
