IT CAUSES sporadic, lethal outbreaks in people and apes in Africa, but no one knew where the Ebola virus spends the rest of its time. Now Eric Leroy at the International Centre for Medical Research in Franceville, Gabon, and his colleagues think they have tracked it down to three species of fruit bat. “It seems probable that they are the wild reservoir of Ebola,” says Leroy.
Previous campaigns to test animals, including bats, in outbreak zones have failed to find the virus. This time the effort succeeded, says Leroy, because the team sampled bats near where carcasses of apes killed…
