Monitoring of ectoparasites and viruses in bats in urban Atlantic Forest fragment

• Grant number: 17/25123-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: April 01, 2018
• End date: June 30, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Microbiology
• Agreement: Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES)
• Principal Investigator: Edison Luiz Durigon
• Grantee: Amanda de Oliveira Viana
• Host Institution: Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas (ICB). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Bats perform important ecological roles and are crucial to maintaining environmental health. However, with environmental degradation and its synanthropic habits, the living between humans and bats is becoming increasingly close, which increases the likelihood of contacts and risk situations. Moreover, ecological and physiological aspects of bats, such as gregarious habits and flight-related mechanisms, make bats important reservoirs of diseases. Mitochondrial genomics alterations and oxidative stress regulating pathways caused during the flight, would have allowed greater control of intracellular tumors and pathogens, like viruses. There are indications of which bats and viruses would have coevolved, which would explain the high tolerance of bats to viral infections. During the flight, the bat organism can reach the temperature of up to 40 º C, which would be regarded as a fever in the human. Throughout the coevolutionary process, viruses would have been selected in such a way as to withstand the thermal amplitude of the bat host. Such a characteristic would be one of the factors that would explain the high capacity of these viruses to be transmitted to other species, because it would support the fever in the new hosts. Zhengli (2010) Report identification of more than 80 different viruses in samples from bats. Among the viruses maintained and disseminated by bats, we have as an example of Influenza virus; Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, caused by Coronavirus; and the pulmonary syndrome of hantavirus, as the name implies, caused by the Hantavirus and Rabies. We know some viruses can to have as vectors Arthropods. Bats have a series of ectoparasites arthropods and the most common are family flies Streblidae and Necteribiidae and class mites Acari. Vuren and collaborators (2017) reported a new Orthobunyavírus, nominated Wolkberg Virusem, in flies ectoparasites of bats in the Pteropodidae family, commonly called flying foxes. In Brazil, almost nothing is known about the role of the ectoparasites of bats in the maintenance and dissemination of viruses. That way. It is delineated as objective Monitor the ectoparasites and viruses in bat populations. Search for still verify that there is a relationship between the pathogens found in the ectoparasites and its hosts. (AU)

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

DANIELLE BASTOS ARAUJO; RAFAEL RAHAL GUARAGNA MACHADO; DEYVID EMANUEL AMGARTEN; FERNANDA DE MELLO MALTA; GABRIEL GUARANY DE ARAUJO; CAIRO OLIVEIRA MONTEIRO; ERIKA DONIZETTI CANDIDO; CAMILA PEREIRA SOARES; FERNANDO GATTI DE MENEZES; ANA CAROLINA CORNACHIONI PIRES; et al. SARS-CoV-2 isolation from the first reported patients in Brazil and establishment of a coordinated task network. Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, v. 115, 2020-10-23. (16/20045-7, 17/25123-9, 18/21076-9, 17/24769-2, 18/23680-0, 20/04680-0, 20/06409-1)

DORLASS, ERICK GUSTAVO; MONTEIRO, CAIRO OLIVEIRA; VIANA, AMANDA OLIVEIRA; SOARES, CAMILA PEREIRA; GUARAGNA MACHADO, RAFAEL RAHAL; THOMAZELLI, LUCIANO MATSUMIYA; ARAUJO, DANIELLE BASTOS; LEAL, FABYANO BRUNO; CANDIDO, ERIKA DONIZETTE; TELEZYNSKI, BRUNA LAROTONDA; et al. Lower cost alternatives for molecular diagnosis of COVID-19: conventional RT-PCR and SYBR Green-based RT-qPCR. Brazilian Journal of Microbiology, v. 51, n. 3, AUG 2020. (17/25123-9, 16/20045-7, 18/23680-0, 17/24769-2)

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

VIANA, Amanda de Oliveira. Monitoring of ectoparasites and viroses in an urban fragment of Atlantic forest. 2020. Master's Dissertation - Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas (ICB/SDI) São Paulo.