Modern building structures are a landscape-level driver of bat–human exposure risk in Kenya

Abstract

Identifying the locations and drivers of high-risk interfaces between humans and wildlife is crucial for managing zoonotic disease risk. We suggest that continent-wide improvements to residential housing in Africa are inadvertently creating artificial roosting habitat for synanthropic free-tailed bats (family Molossidae), and that improved buildings are a rapidly accelerating exposure interface that needs urgent research attention and investment. Along a residential gradient in rural southern Kenya, we mapped building use by free-tailed bats in 1109 buildings. We show that bats often roost in human-occupied buildings, with almost one-in-ten buildings exhibiting evidence of bat occupation (9.2%) and one-in-13 found to contain active bat roosts (7.6%). We identified modern-build styles and triangular roofing as building-level predictors of bat occupation, and the proportion of modern buildings as a landscape-level predictor of bat occupancy. Humane preemptive exclusion of bats (by sealing bat entry points to buildings) and restoration of natural roosting habitats should be prioritized as One Health land-use planning strategies in rural Africa.