Bat hotspots created by climate change may have helped drive Covid

Studies have shown that a greater diversity in bat species allows for more coronavirus to emerge

Credit: Ye Aung Thu/AFP

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Climate change may have helped drive the emergence of coronavirus, scientists have suggested.

Researchers at Cambridge University and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany looked for hotspots in which the changing climate has allowed bat species to flourish.

They found that the southern Chinese province of Yunnan has seen some of the biggest changes, likely to have led to an extra 40 species of bats. Previous studies have shown that a greater diversity in bat species allows for more coronavirus to emerge. 

Given that each bat carries an average of 2.67 coronaviruses, the experts estimate that around 100 more viruses are circulating in Yunnan now than at the beginning of the 20th century.

Although Yunnan is around 120 miles away from Wuhan, where the Covid outbreak began, it is thought the ancestral virus may have first evolved there and could have been exported through the trafficking of pangolins. 

Dr Robert Beyer, a researcher at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, said: "Climate change over the last century has made the habitat in Yunnan province suitable for more bat species.

"Understanding how the global distribution of bat species has shifted as a result of climate change may be an important step in reconstructing the origin of the Covid-19 outbreak.

"As climate change altered habitats, species left some areas and moved into others, taking their viruses with them. This not only altered the regions where viruses are present but most likely allowed for new interactions between animals and viruses, causing more harmful viruses to be transmitted or evolve."

However, experts commenting on the research said factors other than climate change were also likely to play a role in the virus.

Kate Jones, a professor of ecology and biodiversity at University College London, said: "Climate change certainly has a role to play in changing species distributions to increase ecological hazard. 

"However, spillover risk is a complex interplay of not only ecological hazard but also human exposure and vulnerability. It may turn out that increases in human populations, human movement and degrading natural environments through agricultural expansion have a more important role to play in understanding the spillover process of SARS-CoV-2."

 The study was published in the journal Science of the Total Environment.