Cross-scale assessment of environmental variation on RABV reservoir Desmodus rotundus

Anthropogenic impacts on the natural world are a topic of continued assessment and scientific concern. Human activity has been shown to impact multiple ecological components, with changes to disease dynamics caused by human activity being linked to disease emergence and pandemic risk. In Latin America, the rabies virus (RABV) is regularly transmitted by the common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus). Rabies virus is extremely lethal, killing nearly 100% of infected individuals. Desmodus rotundus is a sanguivorous (blood-feeding) species that can easily transmit RABV to their prey during normal feeding behaviors, thereby acting as a wildlife reservoir and known host for the virus. Previous research has found that vampire bat-transmitted RABV has increased in prevalence and geographic distribution in association with changes to landscape and climate. As such, the D. rotundus-RABV disease system exemplifies many of the factors identified as foundational to the broader elucidation of disease emergence from pathogens of wildlife origin. This dissertation demonstrated how environmental variation associated with human activity may impact D. rotundus at the population level, the impacts of landscape factors on spillover transmission risk, and the broader climatic drivers of host distribution across a continent. In doing so, this cross-scale assessment filled key research gaps in our current understanding of emerging infectious diseases of bat origin.