Bucknell Professors DeeAnn Reeder, Ken Field Featured in August National Geographic Cover Story

Bucknell University biology professors DeeAnn Reeder and Ken Field are featured in the cover story on bats in the August issue of National Geographic magazine. Already noted as some of the world's leading bat researchers, Reeder, a National Geographic Explorer, and Field are featured in the magazine for their research project in Uganda studying how some bats may be able to carry the Ebola virus without succumbing to the disease.

Three years ago, the Bucknell researchers were awarded a $2.9 million grant by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for the five-year study. They are conducting the research in Uganda with a small number of Bucknell undergraduate students and researchers from Muni University to study three different bat species — two African and one North American— that have varying potential links to the Ebola virus. This grant, one of the largest in Bucknell’s history, is enabling them to investigate how bats' unique physiology allows them to host deadly diseases that can spill over to humans.

To get a glimpse into the immune processes of bats with no links to Ebola, the researchers first collected bats from across the Susquehanna Valley. Photo by Emily Paine, Communications

The story reports that the Bucknell researchers and Ugandan scientists are using detailed tests of gene activity to find out precisely how different bats respond to a noninfectious fragment of Ebola virus. Reeder, Field and Muni University's Imran Ejotre, who earned his master's degree at Bucknell, are trapping and immunizing bats with Ebola proteins in hopes of seeing exactly how the immune systems of different species cope with a virus-like threat.

"I want to understand how the heck they do all the things that they do, and their immune system is a piece of that. They're exceptionally good at managing those pathogens to avoid illness themselves," said Reeder, in the magazine story. She was one of the international researchers who published a related April study in Nature Communications on ecological countermeasures to prevent pathogen spillover and subsequent pandemics.

"These viruses do not kill these bats. They don't even make them sick," added Field, in the story.

In the final years of the project, the researchers aim to test how bats' ability to rapidly raise their body temperature during flight and then lower it at rest may contribute to their immunity against viruses that are deadly to humans.

Some experimental samples are being brought back to Bucknell for further analysis, and students from Field's Advanced Data Analysis and Bioinformatics course are conducting high-level analysis of the data.

The Bucknell researchers also provided training to Muni students on new equipment that was gifted to the University and is being used in the study.