The DOI matches its Crossref record; 162 of the 162 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Bat-borne virus diversity, spillover and emergence
Open accessAbstract
Most viral pathogens in humans have animal origins and arose through cross-species transmission. Over the past 50 years, several viruses, including Ebola virus, Marburg virus, Nipah virus, Hendra virus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV), Middle East respiratory coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and SARS-CoV-2, have been linked back to various bat species. Despite decades of research into bats and the pathogens they carry, the fields of bat virus ecology and molecular biology are still nascent, with many questions largely unexplored, thus hindering our ability to anticipate and prepare for the next viral outbreak. In this Review, we discuss the latest advancements and understanding of bat-borne viruses, reflecting on current knowledge gaps and outlining the potential routes for future research as well as for outbreak response and prevention efforts. Bats harbour a large number of different viruses, some of which have spilled over to cause human disease. In this Review, Letko, Munster and colleagues discuss the diversity of bat viruses and the factors that determine the emergence of zoonotic viruses from bats.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin
Zhou, P., Yang, X.-L., Wang, X.-G., Hu, B., Zhang, L., Zhang, W., Si, H.-R., Zhu, Y., Li, B., Huang, C.-L., et al. (2020) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2012-7 · Cited by 21,969
Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 is a functional receptor for the SARS coronavirus
Li, W., Moore, M. J., Vasilieva, N., Sui, J., Wong, S. K., Berne, M. A., Somasundaran, M., Sullivan, J. L., Luzuriaga, K., Greenough, T. C., et al. (2003) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature02145 · Cited by 5,923
Wan, Y., Shang, J., Graham, R., Baric, R. S., & Li, F. (2020) · Journal of Virology · doi:10.1128/jvi.00127-20 · Cited by 4,341
Letko, M., Marzi, A., & Munster, V. (2020) · Nature Microbiology · doi:10.1038/s41564-020-0688-y · Cited by 3,109
Self-citationBats Are Natural Reservoirs of SARS-Like Coronaviruses
Li, W., Shi, Z., Yu, M., Ren, W., Smith, C., Epstein, J. H., Wang, H., Crameri, G., Hu, Z., Zhang, H., et al. (2005) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1118391 · Cited by 2,560
Guan, Y., Zheng, B. J., He, Y. Q., Liu, X. L., Zhuang, Z. X., Cheung, C. L., Luo, S. W., Li, P. H., Zhang, L. J., Guan, Y. J., et al. (2003) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1087139 · Cited by 2,406
Dipeptidyl peptidase 4 is a functional receptor for the emerging human coronavirus-EMC
Raj, V. S., Mou, H., Smits, S. L., Dekkers, D. H. W., Müller, M. A., Dijkman, R., Muth, D., Demmers, J. A. A., Zaki, A., Fouchier, R. A. M., et al. (2013) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature12005 · Cited by 2,061
Isolation and characterization of a bat SARS-like coronavirus that uses the ACE2 receptor
Ge, X.-Y., Li, J.-L., Yang, X.-L., Chmura, A. A., Zhu, G., Epstein, J. H., Mazet, J. K., Hu, B., Zhang, W., Peng, C., et al. (2013) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature12711 · Cited by 1,778 · cited 18×
“Several viruses closely related to SARS-CoV were found in bats, and actual SARS-CoV was directly isolated from animals in open-air markets 14,63,71 .”
InfluentialFruit bats as reservoirs of Ebola virus
Leroy, E. M., Kumulungui, B., Pourrut, X., Rouquet, P., Hassanin, A., Yaba, P., Délicat, A., Paweska, J. T., Gonzalez, J.-P., & Swanepoel, R. (2005) · Nature · doi:10.1038/438575a · Cited by 1,606
Bats: Important Reservoir Hosts of Emerging Viruses
Calisher, C. H., Childs, J. E., Field, H. E., Holmes, K. V., & Schountz, T. (2006) · Clinical Microbiology Reviews · doi:10.1128/cmr.00017-06 · Cited by 1,514
Cited by
Zhou, H., Ji, J., Chen, X., Bi, Y., Li, J., Wang, Q., Hu, T., Song, H., Zhao, R., Chen, Y., et al. (2021) · Cell · doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.06.008 · Cited by 380
Ecology, evolution and spillover of coronaviruses from bats
Ruiz-Aravena, M., McKee, C., Gamble, A., Lunn, T., Morris, A., Snedden, C. E., Yinda, C. K., Port, J. R., Buchholz, D. W., Yeo, Y. Y., et al. (2022) · Nature Reviews Microbiology · doi:10.1038/s41579-021-00652-2 · Cited by 284
Self-citationPathogen spillover driven by rapid changes in bat ecology
Eby, P., Peel, A. J., Hoegh, A., Madden, W., Giles, J. R., Hudson, P. J., & Plowright, R. K. (2023) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-022-05506-2 · Cited by 283
Self-citationIn search of a pan-coronavirus vaccine: next-generation vaccine design and immune mechanisms
Cankat, S., Demael, M. U., & Swadling, L. (2023) · Cellular & Molecular Immunology · doi:10.1038/s41423-023-01116-8 · Cited by 84
Bat genomes illuminate adaptations to viral tolerance and disease resistance
Morales, A. E., Dong, Y., Brown, T., Baid, K., Kontopoulos, D. G., Gonzalez, V., Huang, Z., Ahmed, A.-W., Bhuinya, A., Hilgers, L., et al. (2025) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-024-08471-0 · Cited by 78
Metadata
- Authors
- Letko, M., Seifert, S. N., Olival, K. J., Plowright, R. K., & Munster, V. J.
- Venue
- Nature Reviews Microbiology
- Published
- 2020-06-11
- Volume
- 18
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 461-471
- ISSN
- 1740-1526 (ISSN-L)
- 1740-1534
- OpenAlex
- W3035074698
- Cited by
- 553
- References
- 162
- FWCI
- 15.28
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Bat-borne virus diversity, spillover and emergence. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1038/s41579-020-0394-z
- The paper
- Letko, M., Seifert, S. N., Olival, K. J., Plowright, R. K., & Munster, V. J. (2020). Bat-borne virus diversity, spillover and emergence. Nature Reviews Microbiology. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41579-020-0394-z
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.