The fields of viral ecology and evolution are rapidly expanding, motivated in part by concerns around emerging zoonoses. One consequence is the proliferation of host–virus association data, which underpin viral macroecology and zoonotic risk prediction but remain fragmented across numerous data portals. In the present article, we propose that synthesis of host–virus data is a central challenge to characterize the global virome and develop foundational theory in viral ecology. To illustrate this, we build an open database of mammal host–virus associations that reconciles four published data sets. We show that this offers a substantially richer view of the known virome than any individual source data set but also that databases such as these risk becoming out of date as viral discovery accelerates. We argue for a shift in practice toward the development, incremental updating, and use of synthetic data sets in viral ecology, to improve replicability and facilitate work to predict the structure and dynamics of the global virome.

中文翻译：

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病毒生态学中的数据增殖、协调和合成

病毒生态学和进化领域正在迅速扩大，部分原因是对新兴人畜共患病的担忧。结果之一是宿主-病毒关联数据的激增，这些数据支撑着病毒宏观生态学和人畜共患病风险预测，但在众多数据门户中仍然分散。在本文中，我们提出宿主病毒数据的合成是表征全球病毒组和发展病毒生态学基础理论的核心挑战。为了说明这一点，我们建立了一个哺乳动物宿主-病毒关联的开放数据库，该数据库协调了四个已发布的数据集。我们表明，与任何单独的源数据集相比，这提供了对已知病毒组的更丰富的视图，而且随着病毒发现的加速，这些数据库可能会变得过时。