Tamás GörfölUniversity of Pécs | PTE · National Laboratory of Virology
Tamás Görföl
PhD
About
148
Publications
49,655
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Introduction
My research interest focuses on the systematics, phylogenetics, viruses, ectoparasites, acoustics and conservation of bats. Most of my projects are running in Southeast Asia and Europe.
Additional affiliations
January 2014 - present
Education
September 2009 - June 2011
Faculty of Veterinary Science, Szent István University
Field of study
- biology
Publications
Publications (148)
Knowledge as to the taxonomic status of enigmatic bat species often is hindered by limited availability of specimens. This is particularly true for aerial-hawking bats that are difficult to catch. One such species, "Hypsugo" joffrei, was originally described in Nyctalus due to its long and slender wings, but subsequently transferred to Pipistrellus...
Filoviruses are prime examples of emerging human pathogens that are transmitted to humans by zoonotic spillover events. Since their initial discovery, filovirus outbreaks have occured with increasing frequency and intensity. There is an urgent need to better understand their enzootic ecology and pathogenic potential, given recent zoonotic virus spi...
Recordings of bat echolocation and social calls are used for many research purposes from ecological studies to taxonomy. Effective use of these relies on identification of species from the recordings, but comparative recordings or detailed call descriptions to support identification are often lacking for areas with high biodiversity. The ChiroVox w...
Southeast Asia includes several global biodiversity hotspots and bats account for nearly one-third of mammal species currently known in the region. While acoustic methods have become widespread in bat research, basic information is often lacking on the echolocation calls produced by Asian bat species. Since such information can aid a wide variety o...
Previous studies on horseshoe bats ( Rhinolophus spp.) have described many coronaviruses related to SARS‐CoV ( SARSCoVr ) in China and only a few coronaviruses related to SARS‐CoV‐2 ( SARSCoV2r ) in Yunnan (southern China), Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. Here, we report the results of several field missions carried out in 2017, 2021 and 2022 across V...
Studying hybrid zones that form between morphologically cryptic taxa offers valuable insights into the mechanisms of cryptic speciation and the evolution of reproductive barriers. Although hybrid zones have long been the focus of evolutionary studies, the awareness of cryptic hybrid zones increased recently due to rapidly growing evidence of biolog...
Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF) is a severe illness transmitted by ticks and infectious body fluids, characterized by fever, hemorrhagic syndrome, and high fatality rates. This study investigates the recent outbreak of CCHF in North Macedonia, where cases had not been reported for over 50 years, aiming to elucidate factors contributing to it...
Background
Different mosquito control strategies have been implemented to mitigate or prevent mosquito-related public health situations. Modern mosquito control largely relies on multiple approaches, including targeted, specific treatments. Given this, it is becoming increasingly important to supplement these activities with rapid and mobile diagno...
Background
Different mosquito control strategies have been implemented to mitigate or prevent mosquito-related public health situations. Modern mosquito control largely relies on multiple approaches, including targeted, specific treatments. Given all this, it is becoming increasingly important to supplement these activities with rapid and mobile di...
Climate and land-cover changes are among major threats to biodiversity. However, the interactive effects of the two threats are often overlooked in conservation planning. Using 81 bat species occurring in Vietnam as a case, we investigated the individual and interactive effects of climate and land-cover changes, highlighting the importance of this...
Previous studies on horseshoe bats ( Rhinolophus spp .) have described many coronaviruses related to SARS-CoV (SARSCoVr) in China and only a few coronaviruses related to SARS-CoV-2 ( SARSCoV2r ) in Yunnan, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. Here, we report the results of several field missions carried out in 2017, 2021 and 2022 across Vietnam during whic...
Lloviu cuevavirus (LLOV) was the first identified member of Filoviridae family outside the Ebola and Marburgvirus genera. A massive die-off of Schreibers’s bats (Miniopterus schreibersii) in the Iberian Peninsula in 2002 led to its initial discovery. Recent studies with recombinant and wild-type LLOV isolates confirmed the zoonotic nature of the vi...
This study integrates analyses of mitochondrial DNA sequences and morphological and acoustic data to re-evaluate the taxonomic status of Rhinolophus rex rex , R. r. paradoxolophus and R. schnitzleri throughout their distribution ranges. Based on a dense geographic sampling of specimens hitherto referred to these taxa and contrary to the current tax...
Solar energy is an important renewable energy source. However, the ecological effects of solar farms are largely unknown. Behavioral experiments proved previously that smooth surfaces, such as solar panels act as sensory traps for bats and insects, increasing collision risk, and suggesting that solar farms may affect local ecosystems in a complex w...
Several bat-associated circoviruses and circular rep-encoding single-stranded DNA (CRESS DNA) viruses have been described, but the exact diversity and host species of these viruses are often unknown. Our goal was to describe the diversity of bat-associated circoviruses and cirliviruses, thus, 424 bat samples from more than 80 species were collected...
Background
Canine morbillivirus (canine distemper virus, CDV) is a member of the Paramyxoviridae family. Canine distemper is a serious viral disease that affects many mammalian species, including members of the Mustelidae family. These animals have an elusive nature, which makes related virological studies extremely challenging. There is a signific...
Lloviu cuevavirus (LLOV) was the first identified member of Filoviridae family outside the Ebola and Marburgvirus genera. A massive die-off of Schreibers’ bent-winged bats ( Miniopterus schreibersii ) in the Iberian Peninsula in 2002 led to its discovery.
Studies with recombinant and wild-type LLOV isolates confirmed the susceptibility of human-der...
Some filoviruses can be transmitted to humans by zoonotic spillover events from their natural host and filovirus outbreaks have occured with increasing frequency in the last years. The filovirus Lloviu virus (LLOV), was identified in 2002 in Schreiber’s bats ( Miniopterus schreibersii ) in Spain and was subsequently detected in bats in Hungary. Her...
Purpose
Our main goal was to develop novel sampling protocol and study design for viral discovery and monitoring in bats to support multi purposal research activities (ie. detection, sequencing, serology, isolation) with minimal conservational effect and disturbance. We tested this method within the framework of Lloviu cuevavirus (LLOV) surveillanc...
Yellow house bats (Scotophilus) have been known for centuries as a widespread genus of vesper bats in the Indomalayan Region. Despite this, their taxonomic status and phylogeographical patterns remain unclear due to differing criteria employed by early taxonomists and inconsistencies between morphological and molecular assessments. To address these...
Bats lead a hidden, nocturnal lifestyle, thus it is hard to gather visual data on their occurrence.
However, due to the availability of bat detectors and computer programs, the ultrasounds they emit
can be measured properly, providing a significant amount of information about their activity, habitat use and species composition. The first Hungarian...
European mustelids include the European polecat, Mustela putorius, and the steppe polecat, M. eversmanii. Both occur sympatrically
in the Pannonian Basin, where M. eversmanii hungarica represents the westernmost part of the latter species and they
allegedly hybridize. We investigated the morphological relationships in sympatric and allopatric popul...
Insular bats are among the most vulnerable mammal species whose survival are threatened by several human-mediated factors, frequently paralleled by the paucity of information and lack of adequate management plans. Pipistrellus sturdeei is known only by the holotype collected from the remote Bonin Islands more than a hundred years ago and is declare...
Infectious diseases can have devastating effects on populations, and the ability of a pathogen to persist in the environment can amplify these impacts. Understanding how environmental pathogen reservoirs influence the number of individuals that become infected and suffer mortality is essential for disease control and prevention. We integrated disea...
Bats are well adapted to inhabit human settlements and are suitable reservoirs of a high number of vector-borne pathogens with veterinary-medical importance. Owing to these eco-epidemiological traits, the importance of studying bat ectoparasites is increasingly recognized. However, relevant molecular-phylogenetic data are missing from several count...
In the past ten years, several novel hantaviruses were discovered in shrews, moles, and bats, suggesting the dispersal of hantaviruses in many animal taxa other than rodents during their evolution. Interestingly, the coevolutionary analyses of most recent studies have raised the possibility that nonrodents may have served as the primordial mammalia...
In the past ten years several novel hantaviruses were discovered in shrews, moles and bats, suggesting the dispersal of hantaviruses in many animal taxa other than rodents during their evolution. Interestingly, the co-evolutionary analyses of most recent studies have raised the possibility of non-rodents may have served as the primordial mammalian...
This paper presents the rediscovery of Van Hasselt’s Mouse-eared Bat Myotis hasseltii after nearly 50 years and its genetic data from Hanoi, northern Vietnam. In addition, a snapshot of the impacts of urbanization on the current distribution and conservation status of this native bat species in Hanoi is also provided.
How multitrophic relationships between wildlife communities and their ectoparasitic vectors interact to shape the diversity of vector-borne microorganisms is poorly understood. Nested levels of dependence among microbes, vectors, and vertebrate hosts may have complicated effects on both microbial community assembly and evolution. We examined Barton...
Background
Despite the increasingly recognized eco-epidemiological significance of bats, data from molecular analyses of vector-borne bacteria in bat ectoparasites are lacking from several regions of the Old and New Worlds.
Methods
During this study, six species of ticks (630 specimens) were collected from bats in Hungary, Romania, Italy, Kenya, S...
The barbastelle bat (Barbastella barbastellus) is a rare species throughout its Western Palearctic range. It is protected by many international regulations and national laws and can be considered as an umbrella species of old, native forests. We studied roost preferences of B. barbastellus by radio-tracking in a floodplain forest in Hungary to have...
The long-toothed pipistrelle (Hypsugo dolichodon) was recently described as a new bat species based on four specimens from Laos and Vietnam. During investigations of taxa in the Vespertilionini tribe, we noted that specimens reported as Falsistrellus affinis (recently transferred to genus Hypsugo) from Myanmar and Cambodia have mtDNA sequences and...
Bats are important zoonotic reservoirs for many pathogens worldwide. Although their highly specialized ectoparasites, bat flies (Diptera: Hippoboscoidea), can transmit Bartonella bacteria including human pathogens, their eco-epidemiology is unexplored. Here, we analyzed the prevalence and diversity of Bartonella strains sampled from 10 bat fly spec...
The vespertilionid genus Falsistrellus currently contains three Asian (F. affinis, F. petersi and F. mordax) and two Australian (F. tasmaniensis and F. mackenziei) species. The Australian species are characterised with distinct external and craniodental traits, whereas the Asian taxa morphologically more closely resemble Hypsugo and the published
m...
Bat surveys at Gunung Gading National Park (GGNP) were conducted for 29 non-consecutive nights, which consisted of five separate sampling sessions from November 2011 until November 2015. A total of 378 individuals representing 36 species from six families were captured, from an accumulated effort of 435 trapping nights. This corresponds to approxim...
The pond bat (Myotis dasycneme) is a Western Palearctic bat species with patchy distribution throughout its range as it heavily depends on large water bodies. In most countries in its range, it is a rare species, hence protected with several international conventions and national legislation. Besides a few scattered localities, almost no informatio...
Endogenous retrovirus (ERV) sequences provide a rich source of information about the long-term interactions between retroviruses and their hosts. However, most ERVs are derived from a subset of retrovirus groups, while ERVs derived from certain other groups remain extremely rare. In particular, only a single ERV sequence has been identified that sh...
Circular replication-associated protein encoding single-stranded DNA (CRESS DNA) viruses are increasingly recognized worldwide in a variety of samples. Representative members include well-described veterinary pathogens with worldwide distribution, such as porcine circoviruses or beak and feather disease virus. In addition, numerous novel viruses be...
Babesia vesperuginis is the only piroplasm known to infect bats. Unlike most members of the genus Babesia, it is probably transmitted by a soft tick species (i.e. Argas vespertilionis). Recently, two studies have been conducted to clarify the phylogenetic status of this species, and both agreed on placing it into a basal position among Babesia sens...
The predominance of dietary viruses in bat guano samples had been described recently, suggesting a new opportunity to survey the prevalence and to detect new viruses of arthropods or even plant-infecting viruses circulating locally in the ecosystem. Here we describe the diversity of viruses belonging to the order Picornavirales in Hungarian insecti...
Kinetoplastids are flagellated protozoa, including principally free-living bodonids and exclusively parasitic trypanosomatids. In the most species-rich ge-nus, Trypanosoma, more than thirty species were found to infect bats worldwide. Bat trypanosomes are also known to have played a significant role in the evolution of T. cruzi, a species with high...
Background
Bats are regarded as the primary (ancestral) hosts of bugs of the family Cimicidae. The historically and economically most important species in the family is the common bedbug (Cimex lectularius), because of its worldwide occurrence and association with humans. This molecular-phylogenetic study was initiated in order to expand the knowle...
The genus Glauconycteris Dobson, 1875 currently contains 12 species of butterfly bats, all endemic to sub-Saharan Africa. Most species are rarely recorded, with half of the species known from less than six geographic localities. The taxonomic status of several species remains problematic. Here, we studied the systematics of butterfly bats using bot...
Argas vespertilionis is a geographically widespread haematophagous ectoparasite species of bats in the Old World, with a suspected role in the transmission of Babesia vesperuginis. The aims of the present study were (1) to molecularly screen A. vespertilionis larvae (collected in Europe, Africa and Asia) for the presence of piroplasms, and (2) to a...
Members of the viral family Circoviridae are increasingly recognized worldwide. Bats seem to be natural reservoirs or dietary-related dispensers of these viruses. Here, we report a distantly related member of the genus Cyclovirus detected in the faeces of a great roundleaf bat (Hipposideros armiger). Interestingly, the novel virus lacks a Circoviri...