Virus dynamics and phyloanatomy: Merging population dynamic and phylogenetic approaches

Abstract

In evolutionary biology and epidemiology, phylodynamic methods are widely used to infer population biological characteristics, such as the rates of replication, death, migration, or, in the epidemiological context, pathogen spread. More recently, these methods have been used to elucidate the dynamics of viruses within their hosts. Especially the application of phylogeographic approaches has the potential to shed light on anatomical colonization pathways and the exchange of viruses between distinct anatomical compartments. We and others have termed this phyloanatomy. Here, we review the promise and challenges of phyloanatomy, and compare them to more classical virus dynamics and population genetic approaches. We argue that the extremely strong selection pressures that exist within the host may represent the main obstacle to reliable phyloanatomic analysis.