FIGURE 1. Fruit bats as potential carriers of Ebola virus.

a, Dates and locations of animal-trapping sites (blue) and of Ebola virus outbreaks among humans (red stars) in Gabon and the Republic of the Congo. b, Phylogeny of Ebola viruses inferred from RNA polymerase sequences. Values below branches are bayesian posterior probabilities (left of slash; values less than 0.5 not shown); bootstrap percentages were obtained by maximum parsimony (right of the slash; values under 50% not shown). (GenBank accession numbers, DQ 205409–205415.) Sequences of the subtype Zaire (red) share five nucleotide signatures in positions 1,755 (T), 1,800 (G), 1,857 (T), 2,002 (A) and 2,003 (C) of the complete coding sequence of the gene encoding RNA polymerase. c, Geographic distribution (inside coloured lines) of the fruit bats Hypsignathus monstrosus (blue), Epomops franqueti (red) and Myonycteris torquata (yellow).