Two decades of B. pseudomallei: continuity or surveillance gaps?
For the southern China series, the sampling chronology should precede claims about persistence or spread: years and places sampled, intervals without genomes, then the placement of later isolates relative to earlier local and global lineages. Genomic separation can exclude direct descent through sampled intermediates. It cannot exclude unsampled local persistence, repeated importation from an undersampled source, or movement between sparsely sampled regions. Which histories are rejected by the phylogeny, and which remain indistinguishable because surveillance was uneven?
