Tree-based evolutionary predictions were informative in 16 out of 19 years of seasonal influenza data, with near-optimal performance achieved in 30 of cases when predicting the progenitor lineage of the upcoming influenza season. This demonstrates that genealogical patterns contain predictive power for influenza evolution over multiple annual cycles. [@neher_predicting_2014]
Definitions
- evolutionary prediction
- genealogical pattern
- progenitor lineage
- seasonal influenza
- influenza season
- evolution
- lineage
Synthesis
Evolutionary prediction methods that analyze genealogical patterns in seasonal influenza have been established as informative tools for forecasting successful viral lineages across multiple years and influenza seasons. The mechanistic foundation of these predictions rests on identifying progenitor lineages within genealogical tree structures, which encode information about relative fitness differences that drive the evolution of these asexual populations under persistent selection pressure. The approach successfully predicts influenza strain dynamics by leveraging branching patterns that reflect which current lineages will give rise to dominant variants in subsequent seasons, with demonstrated near-optimal performance in identifying progenitor lineages across multiple test cases. While the general predictive capacity of this genealogical tree analysis has been validated for seasonal influenza over multi-year periods, questions remain about the robustness of predictions under varying evolutionary conditions and the relative contribution of different genealogical features to forecasting accuracy.