Identifying geographic hot spots of reassortment in a multipartite plant virus

Abstract Reassortment between different species or strains plays a key role in the evolution of multipartite plant viruses and can have important epidemiological implications. Identifying geographic locations where reassortant lineages are most likely to emerge could be a valuable strategy for informing disease management and surveillance efforts. We developed a predictive framework to identify potential geographic hot spots of reassortment based upon spatially explicit analyses of genome constellation diversity. To demonstrate the utility of this approach, we examined spatial variation