Bats in the tropics of the Americas are a reservoir for morbilliviruses—a genus of RNA viruses that includes the human measles virus. However, their role in spreading morbilliviruses to other mammalian species is unclear.
An international team of researchers, led by Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the German Center for Infection Research, has now studied the spread of morbilliviruses in bats and monkeys in Brazil and Costa Rica, discovering new virus species and host switches from bats to other mammalian species.
The scientists call for increased surveillance and experimental risk assessments of reservoir-bound morbilliviruses. The study was published in Nature Microbiology on May 27, 2025.
Morbilliviruses are highly contagious viruses that cause serious diseases in humans and animals. Prominent examples include measles in humans, rinderpest in cattle, and canine distemper in carnivores. Although rinderpest has been successfully eradicated, other morbilliviruses continue to pose a significant threat to human health and livestock. Despite their wide distribution among various mammalian species, little is known about their main hosts, geographical distribution, and their potential to jump to new species.
The new study examined more than 1,600 bats from Brazil and Costa Rica. The researchers found evidence of infection with previously unknown morbilliviruses in several species of bats, including vampire bats, whose blood-sucking behavior facilitates contact with other animals. Antibodies against a newly discovered vampire bat morbillivirus were detected in more than one-third of the vampire bats examined, suggesting that such infections are common and usually not fatal.
