Highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (HPAIV) is a multi-host pathogen with lineages that pose health risks for domestic birds, wild birds, and humans. One mechanism of intercontinental HPAIV spread is through wild bird reservoirs and wild birds were the likely sources of a Eurasian (EA) lineage HPAIV into North America in 2014. The introduction resulted in several reassortment events with North American (NA) lineage low pathogenic avian influenza viruses and the reassortant EA/NA H5N2 went on to cause one of the largest HPAIV poultry outbreaks in North America. We evaluated three hypotheses about novel HPAIV introduced into wild and domestic bird hosts: (i) transmission of novel HPAIVs in wild birds was restricted by mechanisms associated with highly-pathogenic phenotypes; (ii) the HPAIV poultry outbreak was not self-sustaining and required viral input from wild birds; (iii) reassortment of the EA H5N8 generated reassortant EA/NA AIVs with a fitness advantage over fully Eurasian lineages in North American wild birds. We used a time-rooted phylodynamic model that explicitly incorporated viral population dynamics with evolutionary dynamics to estimate the basic reproductive number (R0) and viral migration among host types in domestic and wild birds, as well as between the EA H5N8 and EA/NA H5N2 in wild birds. We did not find evidence to support hypothesis (i) or (ii) as our estimates of the transmission parameters suggested that the HPAIV outbreak met or exceeded the threshold for persistence in wild birds (R0 > 1) and poultry (R0 ≈ 1) with minimal estimated transmission among host types. There was also no evidence to support hypothesis (iii) because R0 values were similar among EA H5N8 and EA/NA H5N2 in wild birds. Our results suggest that this novel HPAIV and reassortments did not encounter any transmission barriers sufficient to prevent persistence when introduced to wild or domestic birds.
Summary phylogenetic tree avian influenza HA segment
Summary time-rooted Maximum clade credibility phylogenetic tree of the hemagglutinin segment of highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses isolated from wild birds and poultry during the 2014-2015 outbreak in North America. Nodes dates are the mean posterior estimate and are annotated with phylodynamic estimates of uncertainty if posterior probability was > 0.5. NEXUS file
HAv3mcc.p50.mean.tree
Summary phylogenetic tree avian influenza PB2 segment
Time-rooted Maximum clade credibility phylogenetic tree of the polymerase subunit (PB2) segment of highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses isolated from wild birds and poultry during the 2014-2015 outbreak in North America. Nodes dates are the mean posterior estimate and are annotated with phylodynamic estimates of uncertainty if posterior probability was > 0.5. NEXUS file
PB2v3mcc.p50.mean.tree
Summary phylogenetic tree avian influenza M segment
Summary time-rooted Maximum clade credibility phylogenetic tree of the matrix gene (M) segment of highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses isolated from wild birds and poultry during the 2014-2015 outbreak in North America. Nodes dates are the mean posterior estimate and are annotated with phylodynamic estimates of uncertainty if posterior probability was > 0.5. NEXUS file
Mv3mcc.p50.mean.tree
Birth death multitype model initialization file, HA segment
xml file created from the BEAUTI template for the birth-death multi type model (https://github.com/denisekuehnert/bdmm) to implement Bayesian estimation of phylodynamic parameters in BEAST v2.4.3 (available from www.BEAST2.org) with 1 MCMC chain of 10 million iterations. Set-up for analysis of 85 aligned whole segment sequences of the hemagglutinin (HA) gene of isolates from the 2014-2015 highly pathogenic avian influenza HA clade 2.3.4.4 outbreak in North America.
clade2344v310Ma.xml
Birth death multitype model initialization file, PB2 segment
xml file created from the BEAUTI template for the birth-death multi type model (https://github.com/denisekuehnert/bdmm) to implement Bayesian estimation of phylodynamic parameters in BEAST v2.4.3 (available from www.BEAST2.org) from 1 MCMC chain of 10 million iterations. Set-up for analysis of 85 aligned whole segment sequences of the Polymerase Subunit (PB2) gene of isolates from the 2014-2015 highly pathogenic avian influenza HA clade 2.3.4.4 outbreak in North America.
bdmmPB22344v310Ma.xml
Birth death multitype model initialization file, M segment
xml file created from the BEAUTI template for the birth-death multi type model (https://github.com/denisekuehnert/bdmm) to implement Bayesian estimation of phylodynamic parameters in BEAST v2.4.3 (available from www.BEAST2.org) from 1 chain of 10 million iterations. Set-up for analysis of 85 aligned whole segment sequences of the matrix (M) gene of isolates from the 2014-2015 highly pathogenic avian influenza HA clade 2.3.4.4 outbreak in North America.
bdmmM2344v310Ma.xml
Birth death multitype model initialization file, HA segment wild birds
xml file created from the BEAUTI template for the birth-death multi type model (https://github.com/denisekuehnert/bdmm) to implement Bayesian estimation of phylodynamic parameters in BEAST v2.4.3 (available from www.BEAST2.org) from 1 chain of 10 million iterations. Set-up for analysis of 38 aligned whole segment sequences of the hemagglutinin (HA) gene of isolates from wild birds during the 2014-2015 highly pathogenic avian influenza HA clade 2.3.4.4 outbreak in North America.
hpwestwildha10Ma.xml
Birth death multitype model initialization file, PB2 segment wild birds
xml file created from the BEAUTI template for the birth-death multi type model (https://github.com/denisekuehnert/bdmm) to implement Bayesian estimation of phylodynamic parameters in BEAST v2.4.3 (available from www.BEAST2.org) from 1 chain of 10 million iterations. Set-up for analysis of 38 aligned whole segment sequences of the polymerase subunit (PB2) gene of isolates from wild birds during the 2014-2015 highly pathogenic avian influenza HA clade 2.3.4.4 outbreak in North America.
hpwestwildpb210ma.xml
Birth death multitype model initialization file, M segment wild birds
xml file created from the BEAUTI template for the birth-death multi type model (https://github.com/denisekuehnert/bdmm) to implement Bayesian estimation of phylodynamic parameters in BEAST v2.4.3 (available from www.BEAST2.org) from 1 chain of 10 million iterations. Set-up for analysis of 38 aligned whole segment sequences of the matrix (M) gene of isolates from wild birds during the 2014-2015 highly pathogenic avian influenza HA clade 2.3.4.4 outbreak in North America.
hpwestwildpb210ma.xml