Sample collection
A total of 243 fresh fecal samples were collected between October 2015 and September 2017 from the rats with unknown health status captured close to human residences in three different regions in China, including Xiamen city in Fujian province, Yiyang city in Hunan province and Malipo county in Yunnan province. Individual fresh stool samples were immediately placed in RNase-free tubes with 700μl phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) (0.3% homogenate) and stored at -80℃ until further use. These stool specimens have also been examined for rat bocavirus (Xiong, Zhou, et al., 2018), porcine bocaviruses (Xiong et al., 2019) and torque teno virus (Xiong, Mo, et al., 2018).