Myotis myotis) and five distant cousins are revealing the secrets of bat evolution. By Elizabeth PennisiAlthough the SARS-CoV-2 virus has sickened more than 14 million people, bats contract similar viruses all the time without symptoms.
Now, the newly sequenced genomes of six species spanning the bat family tree reveal how they’ve been outsmarting viruses for 65 million years.The findings are an “excellent starting point for understanding the superstar immune systems of bats,” says Laurel Yohe, a postdoc at Yale University who studies bat evolution and was not involved with the work.With more than 1400 species, bats are the second most diverse group of mammals on Earth.