Skip to main content

Main menu

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Current
    • Special Feature Articles - Most Recent
    • Special Features
    • Colloquia
    • Collected Articles
    • PNAS Classics
    • List of Issues
  • Front Matter
    • Front Matter Portal
    • Journal Club
  • News
    • For the Press
    • This Week In PNAS
    • PNAS in the News
  • Podcasts
  • Authors
    • Information for Authors
    • Editorial and Journal Policies
    • Submission Procedures
    • Fees and Licenses
  • Submit
  • Submit
  • About
    • Editorial Board
    • PNAS Staff
    • FAQ
    • Accessibility Statement
    • Rights and Permissions
    • Site Map
  • Contact
  • Journal Club
  • Subscribe
    • Subscription Rates
    • Subscriptions FAQ
    • Open Access
    • Recommend PNAS to Your Librarian

User menu

  • Log in
  • My Cart

Search

  • Advanced search
Home
Home
  • Log in
  • My Cart

Advanced Search

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Current
    • Special Feature Articles - Most Recent
    • Special Features
    • Colloquia
    • Collected Articles
    • PNAS Classics
    • List of Issues
  • Front Matter
    • Front Matter Portal
    • Journal Club
  • News
    • For the Press
    • This Week In PNAS
    • PNAS in the News
  • Podcasts
  • Authors
    • Information for Authors
    • Editorial and Journal Policies
    • Submission Procedures
    • Fees and Licenses
  • Submit
Research Article

High diversity of West African bat malaria parasites and a tight link with rodent Plasmodium taxa

Juliane Schaer, Susan L. Perkins, Jan Decher, Fabian H. Leendertz, Jakob Fahr, Natalie Weber, and Kai Matuschewski
  1. aParasitology Unit, Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, 10117 Berlin, Germany;
  2. bMuseum für Naturkunde, Leibniz Institute for Research on Evolution and Biodiversity, 10115 Berlin, Germany;
  3. cSackler Institute for Comparative Genomics, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY 10024;
  4. dSection of Mammals, Zoologisches Forschungsmuseum A. König, 53113 Bonn, Germany;
  5. eRobert Koch Institute, 13302 Berlin, Germany;
  6. fZoological Institute, Technische Universität Braunschweig, 38106 Braunschweig, Germany;
  7. gDepartment of Migration and Immuno-ecology, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, 78315 Radolfzell, Germany;
  8. hInstitute of Experimental Ecology, University of Ulm, 89069 Ulm, Germany; and
  9. iInstitute of Biology, Humboldt University, 10117 Berlin, Germany

See allHide authors and affiliations

PNAS first published October 7, 2013; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1311016110
Juliane Schaer
aParasitology Unit, Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, 10117 Berlin, Germany;
bMuseum für Naturkunde, Leibniz Institute for Research on Evolution and Biodiversity, 10115 Berlin, Germany;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • For correspondence: schaer@mpiib-berlin.mpg.de perkins@amnh.org
Susan L. Perkins
cSackler Institute for Comparative Genomics, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY 10024;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • For correspondence: schaer@mpiib-berlin.mpg.de perkins@amnh.org
Jan Decher
dSection of Mammals, Zoologisches Forschungsmuseum A. König, 53113 Bonn, Germany;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Fabian H. Leendertz
eRobert Koch Institute, 13302 Berlin, Germany;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Jakob Fahr
fZoological Institute, Technische Universität Braunschweig, 38106 Braunschweig, Germany;
gDepartment of Migration and Immuno-ecology, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, 78315 Radolfzell, Germany;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Natalie Weber
hInstitute of Experimental Ecology, University of Ulm, 89069 Ulm, Germany; and
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Kai Matuschewski
aParasitology Unit, Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, 10117 Berlin, Germany;
iInstitute of Biology, Humboldt University, 10117 Berlin, Germany
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  1. Edited by Jitender P. Dubey, US Department of Agriculture, Beltsville, MD, and approved September 10, 2013 (received for review June 10, 2013)

  • Article
  • Figures & SI
  • Info & Metrics
  • PDF
Loading

Significance

Understanding the evolution of malaria parasites and their phylogenetic context is key to understanding this important human disease. We report an unexpected high diversity of malaria parasite genera in bats from West African forest ecosystems. Two lineages are closely related to Plasmodium parasites from rodents, which are common laboratory model systems, and the results are consistent with switches between these hosts over their evolutionary history. Bats are considered important reservoir hosts for many pathogens, particularly viruses, and have unusually high immunological tolerances. The abundant malaria parasite infections are consistent with this exceptional immunology and suggest that in bats the parasites repeatedly evolved life cycles away from disease-causing replication in red blood cells to less pathogenic propagation in liver tissue.

Abstract

As the only volant mammals, bats are captivating for their high taxonomic diversity, for their vital roles in ecosystems—particularly as pollinators and insectivores—and, more recently, for their important roles in the maintenance and transmission of zoonotic viral diseases. Genome sequences have identified evidence for a striking expansion of and positive selection in gene families associated with immunity. Bats have also been known to be hosts of malaria parasites for over a century, and as hosts, they possess perhaps the most phylogenetically diverse set of hemosporidian genera and species. To provide a molecular framework for the study of these parasites, we surveyed bats in three remote areas of the Upper Guinean forest ecosystem. We detected four distinct genera of hemosporidian parasites: Plasmodium, Polychromophilus, Nycteria, and Hepatocystis. Intriguingly, the two species of Plasmodium in bats fall within the clade of rodent malaria parasites, indicative of multiple host switches across mammalian orders. We show that Nycteria species form a very distinct phylogenetic group and that Hepatocystis parasites display an unusually high diversity and prevalence in epauletted fruit bats. The diversity and high prevalence of novel lineages of chiropteran hemosporidians underscore the exceptional position of bats among all other mammalian hosts of hemosporidian parasites and support hypotheses of pathogen tolerance consistent with the exceptional immunology of bats.

  • Haemosporida
  • Chiroptera
  • vector-borne disease
  • molecular phylogeny
  • host–pathogen coevolution

Footnotes

  • ↵1J.S. and S.L.P. contributed equally to this work.

  • ↵2To whom correspondence may be addressed. E-mail: schaer{at}mpiib-berlin.mpg.de or perkins{at}amnh.org.
  • Author contributions: J.S. and S.L.P. designed research; J.S. and S.L.P. performed research; J.S., J.D., F.H.L., J.F., and N.W. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; J.S., S.L.P., and K.M. analyzed data; and J.S., S.L.P., and K.M. wrote the paper.

  • The authors declare no conflict of interest.

  • This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.

  • Data deposition: The sequences reported in this paper have been deposited in the GenBank database (accession nos. are reported in Tables S4 and S5).

  • This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1311016110/-/DCSupplemental.

Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.

Next
Back to top
Article Alerts
Email Article

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on PNAS.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
High diversity of West African bat malaria parasites and a tight link with rodent Plasmodium taxa
(Your Name) has sent you a message from PNAS
(Your Name) thought you would like to see the PNAS web site.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Citation Tools
Bat malaria parasites
Juliane Schaer, Susan L. Perkins, Jan Decher, Fabian H. Leendertz, Jakob Fahr, Natalie Weber, Kai Matuschewski
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Oct 2013, 201311016; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1311016110

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Request Permissions
Share
Bat malaria parasites
Juliane Schaer, Susan L. Perkins, Jan Decher, Fabian H. Leendertz, Jakob Fahr, Natalie Weber, Kai Matuschewski
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Oct 2013, 201311016; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1311016110
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Mendeley logo Mendeley
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: 118 (15)
Current Issue

Submit

Sign up for Article Alerts

Jump to section

  • Article
  • Figures & SI
  • Info & Metrics
  • PDF

You May Also be Interested in

Smoke emanates from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant a few days after tsunami damage
Core Concept: Muography offers a new way to see inside a multitude of objects
Muons penetrate much further than X-rays, they do essentially zero damage, and they are provided for free by the cosmos.
Image credit: Science Source/Digital Globe.
Water from a faucet fills a glass.
News Feature: How “forever chemicals” might impair the immune system
Researchers are exploring whether these ubiquitous fluorinated molecules might worsen infections or hamper vaccine effectiveness.
Image credit: Shutterstock/Dmitry Naumov.
Venus flytrap captures a fly.
Journal Club: Venus flytrap mechanism could shed light on how plants sense touch
One protein seems to play a key role in touch sensitivity for flytraps and other meat-eating plants.
Image credit: Shutterstock/Kuttelvaserova Stuchelova.
Illustration of groups of people chatting
Exploring the length of human conversations
Adam Mastroianni and Daniel Gilbert explore why conversations almost never end when people want them to.
Listen
Past PodcastsSubscribe
Panda bear hanging in a tree
How horse manure helps giant pandas tolerate cold
A study finds that giant pandas roll in horse manure to increase their cold tolerance.
Image credit: Fuwen Wei.

Similar Articles

Site Logo
Powered by HighWire
  • Submit Manuscript
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • RSS Feeds
  • Email Alerts

Articles

  • Current Issue
  • Special Feature Articles – Most Recent
  • List of Issues

PNAS Portals

  • Anthropology
  • Chemistry
  • Classics
  • Front Matter
  • Physics
  • Sustainability Science
  • Teaching Resources

Information

  • Authors
  • Editorial Board
  • Reviewers
  • Subscribers
  • Librarians
  • Press
  • Cozzarelli Prize
  • Site Map
  • PNAS Updates
  • FAQs
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Rights & Permissions
  • About
  • Contact

Feedback    Privacy/Legal

Copyright © 2021 National Academy of Sciences. Online ISSN 1091-6490