Robust phylodynamic inference and model specification for HIV transmission dynamics

Abstract

The robustness and statistical efficiency of phylodynamic models have been tested by many investigators. However, little attention has been given to model specification and inductive bias that can occur if the model is misspecified or provides an overly simplistic representation of the evolutionary process. Here, we carried out a study involving the simulation of HIV epidemics using a complex model and calibrated to men who have sex with men from San Diego, USA. We then used this epidemic trajectory to simulate genealogies, sequence alignments equivalent to HIV partial pol gene and the complete genome. We proceeded to estimate migration rates using a simplistic representation of the epidemiological model by testing model-based phylodynamics and phylogeographic methods. We observed that even though there were some biases on the estimates using a simplistic representation of the epidemiological model, we were still able to estimate the migration rates depending on the method and sample size used in the analyses.