Researchers discover how cryptic connections in disease transmission influence epidemics

Diseases have repeatedly spilled over from wildlife to humans, causing local to global epidemics, such as HIV/AIDS, Ebola, SARS, and Nipah. A new study by researchers of disease transmission in bats has broad implications for understanding hidden or “cryptic” connections that can spread diseases between species and lead to large-scale outbreaks. By dusting bats with a fluorescent powder that glows under ultraviolet light, Virginia Tech researchers Joseph Hoyt and Kate Langwig were able to trace the dynamics of disease transmission in bat species that have been devastated by white-nose syndrome, a deadly fungal disease that has killed 6.7 million bats in North America since 2006. Their findings were recently published in the journal Nature. “These results uncovered and quantified connections, both within and among species, that we never knew about before,” said first author Joseph Hoyt, who led the study as a UC Santa Cruz graduate student and completed the analyses at Virginia Tech...