It probably originated in the Middle East but has spread to Europe, the USA and Australia, where it has the potential to infect and kill native bird species.

[3] Potential ecological impacts include the transmission of a frequently fatal disease in many bird species worldwide, not just pigeons.

[4] Experts are concerned that there has been a lack of national contingency planning to prevent the entry and spread of Pigeon paramyxovirus in Australia.

[5] The variant PPMV-1 virus is thought to have originated in the Middle East in the late 1970s, with the putative first isolation being made from meat pigeons in Iraq in 1978.

Every effort has been made to ensure that the selection of viruses included in this study is representative of the circulating PPMV-1 strains; however, because available data are derived from those cases that are reported and investigated, it seems inevitable that some sampling bias may be present and influence the phylogenetic tree topology.