“…In fact, this process is highly important to understand IAV evolution, ecology, and adaptation to new hosts, because new viruses can, among others, obtain advantages in viral replication, transmission, or the ability to evade host immune responses (Parrish et al, 2015;Lowen, 2017;Lowen, 2018;Wille and Holmes, 2019). In addition, antigenic drift has been described to be responsible for the emergence of novel IAV variants, when mutations in the viral genome are introduced and selected in the viral population (Shaw, 2007;Parrish et al, 2015;Short et al, 2015;Sutton, 2018;Wille and Holmes, 2019;McLean and Graham, 2022).…”