Phylodynamics

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Audit 0.4.1 · source sha c8c1fc3a2b13 · 19 Oct 2026Report an issue or request a re-scan

• PublisherGPTomics GitHub organizationOwner of the repository this skill is read from
• Source folderGPTomics/bioSkills/epidemiological-genomics/phylodynamicsThe exact folder we audited
• LicenceMITAs the repository states it
• Commit pinned for this verdictc8c1fc3a2b13A new audit runs when the source changes
• Repository statusArchivedLast push 65 days ago
• Sandboxed runNot runSkills are read, not executed; layer L4 is skipped

Its description: Estimates time-scaled phylogenies, molecular-clock rates, effective reproduction number R_e, and population dynamics from dated pathogen genomes using TreeTime (maximum-likelihood) and BEAST2 (Bayesian; strict/relaxed…

---
name: bio-epidemiological-genomics-phylodynamics
description: Estimates time-scaled phylogenies, molecular-clock rates, effective reproduction number R_e, and population dynamics from dated pathogen genomes using TreeTime (maximum-likelihood) and BEAST2 (Bayesian; strict/relaxed clocks; coalescent, Bayesian-Skyline, Skygrid, Birth-Death-Skyline, and sampled-ancestor priors; structured coalescent via MASCOT). Covers root-to-tip clock QC via TempEst, date-randomisation tests, recombination masking via Gubbins/ClonalFrameML before clock inference for recombining bacteria, BDSKY origin-vs-rootHeight pitfalls, sampling-bias correction, multi-chain convergence diagnostics, and reconciling phylodynamic R_e with case-based R_t. Use when dating outbreak origins, estimating substitution rates, inferring R_e through time, building time-calibrated Nextstrain Augur trees, choosing between strict and relaxed clocks, fitting Birth-Death-Skyline models, diagnosing temporal-signal failure, running MASCOT for structured-population analyses, or using UShER for pandemic-scale placement.
tool_type: mixed
primary_tool: BEAST2
---

## Version Compatibility

Reference examples tested with: BEAST 2.7.6+, BDSKY 1.5+, BEASTLabs 2.0+, feast 9.5+, ORC 1.1.2+, MASCOT 3.0+, BEAGLE 4.0+, TreeTime 0.11+, IQ-TREE 2.3.6+, Gubbins 3.3+, ClonalFrameML 1.13+, UShER 0.6+, matUtils 0.6+, BactDating 1.1+ (R), bdskytools 1.1+ (R), coda 0.19+ (R), ape 5.8+ (R), ggplot2 3.5+, BioPython 1.84+, dendropy 4.6+, baltic 0.2+.

Before using code patterns, verify installed versions match. If versions differ:
- BEAST: `beast -version`; `packagemanager -list` for BEAST2 packages and versions
- Python: `pip show treetime`; `help(treetime.TreeTime)`
- R: `packageVersion('bdskytools')`; `?bdskytools::bdskytools_plot`
- CLI: `gubbins --version`; `iqtree --version`; `clonalframeml --version`

If BEAST2 throws `IllegalArgumentException` on XML load, the BDSKY / feast / BEASTLabs minor version probably moved; check the XML against the installed package's example XML in `~/beast/examples/`. BEAST2 XML is NOT robust across minor releases; pin the BEAST package version in any published analysis.

# Phylodynamics

**"How fast is this outbreak growing, and when did it start?"** -> Combine a dated set of pathogen genomes with a molecular-clock model to time-scale the phylogeny, then fit a population-dynamic model (constant / exponential / Bayesian Skyline / BICEPS / Birth-Death-Skyline) to read off R_e, growth rate, and origin date. Choice of clock (strict vs UCLN vs ORC) and tree prior (BSP coalescent vs BICEPS vs BDSKY birth-death) is load-bearing; the same data can yield different R_e under different priors. For bacterial pathogens, recombination MUST be masked first; running BEAST on a *Streptococcus pneumoniae* or *E. coli* core-genome alignment without Gubbins / ClonalFrameML inflates the clock rate 2-5x and the date-randomisation test is NOT a sufficient guard.

- CLI: `treetime --tree raw.nwk --aln aln.fasta --dates dates.tsv --coalescent skyline --clock-filter 4` -- fast ML phylodynamics
- Java/CLI: BEAST2 with BDSKY XML (BEAUti-generated) -- full Bayesian birth-death-skyline with R_e per epoch
- CLI: `gubbins --prefix gubbins core.full.aln` -- recombination masking before bacterial clock inference
- R: `bdskytools::bdskytools_plot` for BDSKY post-processing; `BactDating` for fast Bayesian dating after Gubbins

## The Single Most Important Modern Insight -- Recombination passed unmasked into clock inference inflates the clock rate 2-5x and breaks every downstream estimate

The date-randomisation test is NOT a guard against unmasked recombination. For any recombining bacterium (*S. pneumoniae*, *N. gonorrhoeae*, *E. coli*, *Klebsiella pneumoniae*, *Campylobacter*, *Helicobacter pylori*), run Gubbins (Croucher 2015 *NAR* 43:e15) or ClonalFrameML (Didelot & Wilson 2015 *PLoS Comput Biol* 11:e1004041) on the core-SNP alignment FIRST, rebuild the tree on the recombination-masked alignment, THEN run TreeTime / BEAST. Only *M. tuberculosis* and a handful of clonal pathogens are exempt -- and even those benefit from a recombination check on cross-lineage analyses. The Mostowy 2017 *Mol Biol Evol* 34:1167 fastGEAR paper documents the limits of mask-based approaches for highly recombinogenic species; for those (*N. gonorrhoeae*, *S. pneumoniae* lineages with strong recombination), residual signal persists post-masking and biases downstream R_e estimates downward. Second-order insight: Volz & Frost 2014 *J R Soc Interface* 11:20140945 showed that BEAST coalescent priors are biased under realistic preferential sampling; BDSKY models the sampling proportion explicitly and is the correct tool when sampling rate varies; MASCOT-Skyline / MASCOT-GLM (Müller 2018 *Bioinformatics* 34:3843) further correct for sampling-deme covariation. Third-order insight: Featherstone & Duchêne 2023 *Mol Biol Evol* 40:msad132 quantified that for shallow trees with many samples, sampling times dominate over sequence information for R_e inference -- biased sampling drives biased R_e estimates regardless of how much sequence data is added.

## Algorithmic Taxonomy

| Tool / model | Mechanism | Outputs | Strength | Fails when |
|--------------|-----------|---------|----------|------------|
| TreeTime ML (Sagulenko 2018 *Virus Evol* 4:vex042) | ML joint optimisation of clock + dates with optional coalescent skyline prior | Time-scaled tree + clock rate + root-to-tip regression | 100-1000x faster than BEAST; ideal for outbreak-scale data | Strict-clock assumption; no posterior; no R_e directly |
| BEAST2 + BICEPS (Bouckaert 2022 *Syst Biol* 71:1549) | Bayesian skyline with analytic Ne integration per epoch and new tree-flexing operators | Ne(t) posterior | Modern default skyline; weeks-of-BSP becomes hours | Replaces BSP for many use cases; check current BEAST2 tutorials |
| BEAST2 + BDSKY (Stadler 2013 *PNAS* 110:228) | Birth-death-skyline with explicit sampling | R_e(t), become-

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pip install dendropy biopython baltic

git clone https://github.com/GPTomics/bioSkills
git -C bioSkills checkout c8c1fc3a2b13

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1. 2026-10-19
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   first audit · source c8c1fc3a2b13

Questions about Phylodynamics

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