Quasispecies Theory in Virology

Holmes and Moya claim that quasispecies is an unnecessary and misleading description of RNA virus evolution, that virologists refer to quasispecies inappropriately, and that there is little evidence of quasispecies in RNA virus evolution. They wish to look for other ideas in evolutionary biology and to set down an agenda for future research. I argue here that real virus quasispecies often differ from the theoretical quasispecies as initially formulated and that this difference does not invalidate quasispecies as a suitable theoretical framework to understand viruses at the population level.