Tasmanian devils are endangered by a transmissible cancer known as Tasmanian devil
facial tumour 1 (DFT1). A 2020 study by Patton et al.(Science 370, eabb9772 (doi:
10.1126/science. abb9772)) used genome data from DFT1 tumours to produce a dated
phylogenetic tree for this transmissible cancer lineage, and thence, using phylodynamics
models, to estimate its epidemiological parameters and predict its future trajectory. It
concluded that the effective reproduction number for DFT1 had declined to a value of one …

Tasmanian devils are endangered by a transmissible cancer known as Tasmanian devil
facial tumour 1 (DFT1). A study by Patton et al.[1] used genome data from DFT1 tumours to
produce a dated phylogenetic tree for this transmissible cancer lineage, and thence, using
phylodynamics models, to estimate its epidemiological parameters and predict its future
trajectory. It concluded that the effective reproduction number for DFT1 had declined to a
value of one, and that the disease had shifted from emergence to endemism. We show that …