Caleb Huntington

In my research, I use environmental air sampling to detect viruses shed by bats. This approach allows us to identify both viruses and the bats themselves simply from the air they leave behind, without ever disturbing the animals. It offers a new, non-invasive way to monitor wildlife viruses and better understand potential risks to human health.

I study pre-emergent wildlife viruses, specifically those found in bats. These are viruses that we either know to be a risk to human health, or ones that we have yet to discover and want to evaluate their potential for spillover into human populations. Traditionally, this type of research is challenging because we don’t always know where to look for these viruses. I’m working to test a new approach using environmental air sampling to get a snapshot of both what viruses, and what hosts, are present in a given area at a given time. Like wastewater sampling during the COVID-19 pandemic, this would help to identify periods of time and places where viruses are circulating. Using this approach, I’ve successfully detected coronaviruses from a bat cave in Puerto Rico and captured shedding patterns of the virus. Additionally, we’ve detected every species of bat that roosts in this cave, just by sampling the air. Environmental air sampling represents a promising addition to our toolkit for studying wildlife viruses.