SignificanceIn Latin America, vampire bat rabies constrains livestock production and is the main cause of lethal human rabies outbreaks. Despite knowledge that bat dispersal prevents viral extinction and compromises control campaigns, the movement patterns of infected bats are unknown. Using large host and virus datasets, we illustrate a genetic approach to link population level patterns of host dispersal to pathogen spatial spread that overcomes logistical limitations of tracking animal movement in the wild. The results implicate male vampire bats as contributing disproportionately to rabies spatial spread and offer opportunities to forecast and prevent rabies. The ubiquity of sex-biased dispersal in animals suggests sex-biased pathogen spread could widely influence the distribution and invasion dynamics of emerging diseases.