During recent decades, pathogens that originated in bats have become an increasing public health concern. A major challenge is to identify how those pathogens spill over into human populations to generate a pandemic threat¹. Many correlational studies associate spillover with changes in land use or other anthropogenic stressors^2,3, although the mechanisms underlying the observed correlations have not been identified⁴. One limitation is the lack of spatially and temporally explicit data on multiple spillovers, and on the connections among spillovers, reservoir host ecology and behavior, and viral dynamics. We present 25 years of data on land-use change, bat behavior, and spillover of Hendra virus from Pteropodid bats to horses in subtropical Australia. These data show that bats are responding to environmental change by persistently adopting behaviors that were previously transient responses to nutritional stress. Interactions between land-use change and climate now lead to persistent bat residency in agricultural areas, where periodic food shortages drive clusters of spillovers. Pulses of winter flowering of trees in remnant forests appeared to prevent spillover. We developed integrative Bayesian network models based on these phenomena that accurately predicted the presence or absence of clusters of spillovers in each of 25 years. Our long-term study identifies the mechanistic connections among habitat loss, climate, and increased spillover risk. It provides a framework for examining causes of bat virus spillover and for developing ecological countermeasures to prevent pandemics.

近几十年来，起源于蝙蝠的病原体已成为日益严重的公共卫生问题。一个主要挑战是确定这些病原体如何扩散到人群中并产生大流行威胁¹ 。许多相关研究将溢出与土地利用或其他人为压力源的变化联系起来^2,3 ，尽管观察到的相关性背后的机制尚未确定⁴ 。一个限制是缺乏关于多重溢出以及溢出、储存宿主生态和行为以及病毒动力学之间联系的空间和时间明确数据。我们提供了 25 年关于澳大利亚亚热带土地利用变化、蝙蝠行为以及亨德拉病毒从翼足类蝙蝠传播到马的数据。这些数据表明，蝙蝠通过持续采取以前对营养压力做出短暂反应的行为来应对环境变化。土地利用变化和气候之间的相互作用现在导致蝙蝠在农业地区持续居住，那里周期性的食物短缺导致了集群性的溢出效应。残余森林中树木的冬季开花似乎可以防止溢出。我们根据这些现象开发了综合贝叶斯网络模型，可以准确预测每 25 年是否存在溢出集群。我们的长期研究确定了栖息地丧失、气候和溢出风险增加之间的机制联系。它为研究蝙蝠病毒溢出的原因和制定预防流行病的生态对策提供了一个框架。