Node role of wild boars in virus circulation among wildlife and domestic animals

Zhongzhong Tu, Heting Sun, Tong Wang, Yuhang Liu, Yu Xu, Peng Peng, Siyuan Qin, Changchun Tu () and Biao He ()
Additional contact information
Zhongzhong Tu: Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences
Heting Sun: National Forestry and Grassland Administration
Tong Wang: Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences
Yuhang Liu: Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences
Yu Xu: National Forestry and Grassland Administration
Peng Peng: National Forestry and Grassland Administration
Siyuan Qin: National Forestry and Grassland Administration
Changchun Tu: Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences
Biao He: Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: Abstract Wild boars are considered pest animals in most of their distribution ranges, but their role as virus reservoirs has long been overlooked, with the circulation dynamics of their viruses rarely investigated. Here we prepared a data set, that is, BrCN-Virome, of 9281 viral metagenomes by pan-viromic analyses of 2535 organ and 274 blood samples from 466 healthy and 50 dead wild boars across 127 locations in 26 provincial regions of China. Compared to domestic pigs, BrCN-Virome shows different viromic composition, with a great expansion in the DNA virus diversity. Some wild boar viruses are traced to humans, domestic animals, wildlife, and arthropods, with several evidently or potentially related to epizootics or zoonoses. Pig pathogens spread widely in wild boars and are responsible for a substantial portion of wild boar mortality, with occurrences of co-infection with multiple African swine fever viruses. These results indicate that wild boars are a node animal connecting different animal taxa in the virus circulation network, and that their viruses not only pose a major threat to the pig industry but also challenge wildlife conservation and public health, highlighting the need for routine surveillance of wild boar viruses and active control of the wild boar population.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-64019-4 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-64019-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-64019-4

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().