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Science杂志真的“质疑张树义蝙蝠凭证标本存在弄虚作假重大嫌疑”了吗？”

作者：张俊鹏
 
　　“动物爱好者”上一篇文章的题目是“SCIENCE质疑张树义蝙蝠凭证标本存
在弄虚作假重大嫌疑”。那么，我就把Science杂志2006年2月24日的文章原文放
在这里，供大家参阅，看看事情的真相。

　　我想补充说明的是，我本人就负责整个实验室的野外采样，对此类事情最清
楚：对于蝙蝠携带冠状病毒的研究，我们通常采取如下办法：1）对非常熟悉的
蝙蝠，只采蝙蝠的肛门拭子，随后尽快把蝙蝠放掉；2）对不十分确定的蝙蝠，
用专门的打孔器采两小片蝙蝠的翼膜（两周之内就可以愈合），通过DNA确定物
种；3）对不认识的蝙蝠（有可能是新物种），采一雄、一雌两只蝙蝠，已备将
来宏观描述的需要。

Science 24 February 2006:

Voucher Specimens for SARS-Linked Bats

We read with interest the report "bats are natural reservoirs of 
SARS-like coronaviruses" by W. Li et al. (28 Oct. 2005, p. 676). These 
authors and others (1) have identified bats in three genera as 
reservoirs of SARS-like coronaviruses (SL-CoVs), raising the 
possibility that SARS-CoVs arose among these or other bats. An 
omission in these papers is that no systematic attempt was made to 
preserve voucher specimens (2). 

Properly vouchered specimens of reservoir hosts are a sine qua non in 
a research program whose goals are the accurate understanding of 
disease emergence and the ability to forecast disease risk (3, 4). In 
the present instance, this basic standard was not followed and, thus, 
there is little that can be done to verify species identifications; 
this is especially troublesome when new data indicate that in SARS and 
other diseases, some individuals transmit more infection than 
predicted by homogeneous null models (5, 6). Bat systematics is a 
dynamic area of research, and classifications change accordingly. This 
is especially the case in Rhinolophus, a group where species 
identification cannot be based solely on external morphological 
characters (7). Voucher specimens and associated data could be used 
for genetic validation of species identification and comparison to 
other forms from Africa, Europe, and the Southwest Pacific. This would 
provide the potential for global prediction of SARS-like viruses. 

We submit that work in epidemiology of infectious zoonotic disease is 
strengthened by following four steps: (i) depositing voucher specimens 
of all collected species in a local or international museum of natural 
history; (ii) preserving skin snips from all individuals, in alcohol 
or other preservative; (iii) identifying these samples by numbers so 
they can be crossreferenced to individual vouchers; and (iv) reporting 
these numbers in print. 

Jorge Salazar-Bravo*
Department of Biological Sciences
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, TX 79409, USA

Carleton J. Phillips
Department of Biological Sciences
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, TX 79409, USA 

Robert D. Bradley
Department of Biological Sciences
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, TX 79409, USA 

Robert J. Baker
Department of Biological Sciences
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, TX 79409, USA 

Terry L. Yates
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA 

Luis A. Ruedas
Department of Biology and Museum of Vertebrate Biology
Portland State University
Portland, OR 97207, USA

(XYS20090918)

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