Impact of transmission divergence on outbreak reconstruction.

<p>Transmission divergence is defined as the number of mutations separating pathogen WGS sampled from transmission pairs. <b>A) Change in accuracy of outbreak reconstruction.</b> Accuracy of outbreak reconstruction is defined as the proportion of correctly assigned ancestries in the consensus transmission tree, itself defined as the tree with the most frequent posterior infector for each infectee. Coloured points represent individual simulated outbreaks. The solid black line represents the fitted relationship of the form <i>i</i>—<i>i</i>*exp(-<i>a</i>*<i>K</i>), where <i>K</i> is the transmission divergence and <i>a</i> and <i>i</i> the fitting variables. Dotted black lines represent the corresponding 95% prediction interval. <b>B) Change in posterior entropy.</b> Posterior entropy is related to the number of plausible posterior infectors for a given case. Lower average entropy indicates greater statistical confidence in the proposed transmission tree. The solid black line represents the fitted relationship of the form <i>i</i>*exp(-<i>a</i>*<i>K</i>)—<i>i</i>, where <i>K</i> is the transmission divergence and <i>a</i> and <i>i</i> the fitting variables.