Abstract
The global circulation of the Goose/Guangdong/1996-lineage (Gs/Gd)-descended H5 viruses is highly pathogenic and has led to diversification of the HA gene through gene reassortment with low pathogenic avian influenza viruses (LPAIV), increasing their adaptability to different hosts. Our study aimed to investigate the spatial and temporal dynamics of reassortment events and identify the environmental drivers associated with the ecological niche of the gene reassortment. The complete AIV sequence database was curated to identify the global genotype distributions of HPAIV since the emergence of Gs/Gd H5N1 in 1997. The three-stage study design was developed to identify the gene reassortment hotspots (RA-hotspots) of HPAIV H5 and to examine the association between RA-hotspots and different environmental risk factors. From 1997 to 2023, HPAIV H5 subtype exhibited increasingly complex genetic exchanges, with a total of 136 genotypes identified in this study. Three distinct waves were observed from mono-genotype-dominant (2000–2013) to multi-genotypic co-circulation (2014–2021), followed by regional endemicity (2022–2023). The matched-pair study found that bird species in the orders Anseriformes, Charadriiformes, and Passeriformes are significantly positively associated with RA-hotspots. The dynamic changes in H5 HPAIV genotypes are consistent with the transition of environmental drivers from waterfowl to landfowl, highlighting the importance of targeted surveillance to facilitate the development of mitigation strategies.
Data and code availability
The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are available in Figshare (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.27014134), and the codes used to create the datasets are also available via GitHub repository (https://github.com/BJ-Chen-Eric/AIV-dataset).
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), Taiwan (Grant No. 113-2621-M-005-005). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSTC. Special thanks are extended to Chao-Hsuan Chang and Chien Hua Lu for their works on the wild bird species propensity score modeling.
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CCL performed the curation, ecological analysis, and wrote the original draft. BJC performed the curation, sequence analysis, and data generation, and wrote the relative draft. YTL provided guidance on organizing the AIV sequences. TWC provided guidance on curating environmental factors from satellite data in Google Earth Engine. HDW supervised the concept of all statistics. DYC conceptualized the overall study design and contributed to the final manuscript.
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Chen, BJ., Liang, CC., Li, YT. et al. Integrated approaches to explore temporal-spatial changes in gene reassortment of highly pathogenic avian influenza A(H5) virus in Eurasia, 2000–2023. Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-38466-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-38466-y
