Also evident is the apparently reduced rate of evolution in the lineages leading to the DRC outbreaks in 2014, 2017 and 2018 as first described for the 2014 by Tommy Lam, Eddie Holmes & Yi Guan in http://jvi.asm.org/content/early/2015/07/16/JVI.01226-15 . It would seem now that just two ‘latency’ periods are need parsimoniously, one in the branch leading to the MRCA of Boende-Lokolia/2014 and Bikoro/2018 and another in the branch leading to MRCA of Likati/2017 and Mangina/2018.
Could this be a form of latency in the non-human animal host, related to that seen in survivors in West Africa (i.e., http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/4/e1600378, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5189159/)?