Viral tags as keys to advancing invasion genomics.

Viral symbionts serve as high-resolution genetic tags, revealing recent invasion dynamics in non-native hosts with greater precision than host genomes alone.

• Why it matters: Understanding fine-scale population movements during invasions is limited by current methods focusing on host genomes, which often lack the resolution to detect recent dispersal events.
• What they did: The authors propose using viral symbionts, which evolve rapidly due to their small genomes and high mutation rates, as proxies to track host invasion patterns, supported by a conceptual framework.
• The result: This approach enables more detailed insights into invasion processes, offering new tools for invasion genomics, management, and understanding of host-virus co-evolution during invasions.