MERS, Ebola, and COVID-19—the viruses that cause these diseases likely have the same patient zero: bats. For researcher Daniel Streicker, the key to preventing an outbreak is the bats themselves. A version of this segment was originally heard in the episode, Inoculation.
About Daniel Streicker
Ecologist Daniel Streicker focuses his research on animal-borne diseases. He is a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow and head of the Streicker Group at the University of Glasgow Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health & Comparative Medicine and the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research.
His research uses a range of approaches including longitudinal field studies in wild bats, phylodynamics, machine learning, metagenomicsand epidemiological modeling.