An increasingly asked question is 'can we confidently link bats with emerging viruses?'. No, or not yet, is the qualified answer based on the evidence available. Although more than 200 viruses - some of them deadly zoonotic viruses - have been isolated from or otherwise detected in bats, the supposed connections between bats, bat viruses and human diseases have been raised more on speculation than on evidence supporting their direct or indirect roles in the epidemiology of diseases (except for rabies). However, we are convinced that the evidence points in that direction and that at some point it will be proved that bats are competent hosts for at least a few zoonotic viruses. In this review, we cover aspects of bat biology, ecology and evolution that might be relevant in medical investigations and we provide a historical synthesis of some disease outbreaks causally linked to bats. We provide evolutionary-based hypotheses to tentatively explain the viral transmission route through mammalian intermediate hosts and to explain the geographic concentration of most outbreaks, but both are no more than speculations that still require formal assessment.

Checklist of Brazilian bats, with comments on original records

We present an updated checklist of Brazilian bats, commenting on the endemic and threatened status of the species listed and providing information on recent taxonomic and nomenclatural changes. The bats of Brazil comprise 186 species, 68 genera, and nine families, with 13 species exclusive to the country. From the previous checklists, we add eight species to Brazil: Artibeus amplus, Choeroniscus godmani, Glossophaga bakeri, Lichonycteris obscura, Platyrrhinus guianensis, Trachops ehrhardti, Molossus melini and Myotis pampa. The latter is reported for the country for the first time in this study. The Brazilian list of threatened species includes three species as vulnerable (Furipterus horrens, Lonchophylla bokermanni, and Natalus macrourus) and Lonchophylla dekeyseri as endangered. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists Natalus macrourus as “near threatened”, and Lonchophylla bokermanni and L. dekeyseri as “endangered”. Twenty-two additional species are probable for the country. Compared to previous lists, five species are now considered doubtful records and 19 are considered erroneous records. We reinforce the importance of a continuous update of the bat checklists in all Brazilian states as well as taxonomic revisions and bat inventories in unsampled areas.