Resolving the roles of immunity, pathogenesis, and immigration for rabies persistence in vampire bats

Bats are a frequent source of pathogen spillover to humans and livestock, and a reservoir for emerging infectious diseases. Transmission mechanisms within bat populations remain enigmatic, precluding effective management of zoonotic infections. Vampire bats transmit rabies virus throughout Latin America, causing lethal human rabies and thousands of livestock deaths every year. By selecting among competing transmission models applied to spatially replicated, longitudinal field data, we find that most rabies virus exposures are nonlethal and instead immunize bats, thus facilitating viral persistence. Further, frequent interactions among bats from different colonies are necessary to maintain the chain of transmission. We also evaluate the efficacy of bat culling and demonstrate that it has minimal effects on seroprevalence when spatially coordinated control is absent.