Bats as ‘special’ reservoirs for emerging zoonotic pathogens

• Bats experience morbidity to many extracellular but few intracellular infections.
• Bats control intracellular pathogens via cellular pathways to apoptosis/autophagy.
• These ROS mitigation pathways promote longevity and tumor avoidance.
• Extracellular pathogen-associated morbidity in bats results from immunopathology.

The ongoing West African Ebola epidemic highlights a recurring trend in the zoonotic emergence of virulent pathogens likely to come from bat reservoirs that has caused epidemiologists to ask ‘Are bats special reservoirs for emerging zoonotic pathogens?’ We collate evidence from the past decade to delineate mitochondrial mechanisms of bat physiology that have evolved to mitigate oxidative stress incurred during metabolically costly activities such as flight. We further describe how such mechanisms might have generated pleiotropic effects responsible for tumor mitigation and pathogen control in bat hosts. These synergisms may enable ‘special’ tolerance of intracellular pathogens in bat hosts; paradoxically, this may leave them more susceptible to immunopathological morbidity when attempting to clear extracellular infections such as ‘white-nose syndrome’ (WNS).