Sex Bias in Sample Collections From Bats,the Culprit of SARS Coronavirus,SARS-Coronavirus-2,and Other Emerging Viruses

Chiroptera is the second largest mammalian order in terms of species number.So far,there are more than 1400 known bat species across the six continents,making up 20%of the total number of mammalian species.1 Bats are well recognized to be the hosts of a number of highly pathogenic viruses,such as rabies virus,Hendra virus,Nipah virus,and Ebola virus,for a long time.2–5 Shortly after the severe acute respiratory syndrome(SARS)epidemic which originated from Southern China in 2003,we discovered that bats were the ultimate reservoir of SARSrelated coronavirus(SARSr-CoV).6 In 2012,the cause of the even more fatal Middle East respiratory syndrome(MERS)which originated from the Middle East was also found to be another CoV,MERS-CoV.7 The ancestor of MERS-CoV was also from bats.8,9 Recently,the COVID-19 outbreak that has already officially infected more than 13 million patients with more than 574000 deaths was also confirmed to be due to another betacoronavirus,named SARS coronavirus 2(SARS-CoV-2),from bats.10 Moreover,bat cell lines have also been harvested and propagated for the study of SARS-CoV,MERS-CoV,and SARS-CoV-2.