• Almudena Marí Saéz, Sabrina Weiss, Kathrin Nowak, Vincent Lapeyre, Fee Zimmermann, Ariane Düx, Hjalmar S Kühl, Moussa Kaba, Sebastien Regnaut, Kevin Merkel, Andreas Sachse, Ulla Thiesen, Lili Villányi, Christophe Boesch, Piotr W Dabrowski, Aleksandar Radonić, Andreas Nitsche, Siv Aina J Leendertz, Stefan Petterson, Stephan Becker, Verena Krähling, Emmanuel Couacy-Hymann, Chantal Akoua-Koffi, Natalie Weber, Lars Schaade, Jakob Fahr, Matthias Borchert, Jan F Gogarten, Sébastien Calvignac-Spencer, and Fabian H Leendertz.
• Institute of Tropical Medicine and International Health, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
• EMBO Mol Med. 2015 Jan 1; 7 (1): 17-23.

AbstractThe severe Ebola virus disease epidemic occurring in West Africa stems from a single zoonotic transmission event to a 2-year-old boy in Meliandou, Guinea. We investigated the zoonotic origins of the epidemic using wildlife surveys, interviews, and molecular analyses of bat and environmental samples. We found no evidence for a concurrent outbreak in larger wildlife. Exposure to fruit bats is common in the region, but the index case may have been infected by playing in a hollow tree housing a colony of insectivorous free-tailed bats (Mops condylurus). Bats in this family have previously been discussed as potential sources for Ebola virus outbreaks, and experimental data have shown that this species can survive experimental infection. These analyses expand the range of possible Ebola virus sources to include insectivorous bats and reiterate the importance of broader sampling efforts for understanding Ebola virus ecology. © 2014 The Authors. Published under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.

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