There’s a new episode of PBS Eons.  This one is very relevant… it’s about viruses.  In this case, the herpes virus.

There’s one kind of herpesvirus that’s specific to one species of primate, and each virus split off from the herpesvirus family tree when the primate split off from its own tree. But of course, humans are a special kind of primate.

Here are the two studies we discuss in this episode:

Wertheim, J. O., Smith, M. D., Smith, D. M., Scheffler, K., & Kosakovsky Pond, S. L. (2014). Evolutionary origins of human herpes simplex viruses 1 and 2. Molecular biology and evolution, 31(9), 2356-2364. https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/…

Underdown, S. J., Kumar, K., & Houldcroft, C. (2017). Network analysis of the hominin origin of Herpes Simplex virus 2 from fossil data. Virus evolution, 3(2), vex026. https://academic.oup.com/ve/article/3…