Viral diversity in bats based on Sri Lankan studies - A mini review

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent re-emergence of Nipah virus in India has further highlighted the need for identifying animal reservoirs of emerging viral infections, including coronaviruses. Bats have been recognised as the natural reservoir for three out of the ten recent viruses of pandemic concern infecting humans, including, coronaviruses, filoviruses and heniparviruses. In the twenty-first century, there have been several spill-overs of bat-borne viruses to humans and animals. The displacement and re-distribution of bats due to de-forestation and urbanisation have facilitated these spill-overs bringing the native host into closer proximity to wild or domesticated animals and humans. In the future, emergence of pandemics due to virus spill-over is inevitable. Therefore, research on identifying the viruses in bats is of importance. In this review, we focused on reviewing available data on the viruses detected in bats in Sri Lanka using PubMed, Google Scholar and Web of Science using the search terms “Bats”, “Viruses” and “Sri Lanka”. The search strategy produced a total of 41 studies from PubMed (n=11), Google Scholar (n=19) and Web of Science (n=11). After removing duplicate articles (n=22), bat studies done elsewhere (n=10), non-bat studies (n=2) a total of 6 studies were identified as eligible for this review. Among these, three studies were on coronaviruses, two studies on lyssavirus and one study on paramyxovirus. Overall, we identify a need for further surveillance of viruses in bats in Sri Lanka.