“…Pockets of genetic clustering among geographically related isolates without confirmed epidemiological association have been recently described [ 48 ] and were also noted here in clades from the US Southeast (‘C45-S’, ‘C101-P’, ‘C65-P’, ‘C84-P’, ‘E68-N’, and ‘C116-P’), South Dakota (‘C64-S’, ‘C23-S’, ‘C40-S’, ‘C17-S’, ‘C19-S’, and ‘C79-S’), and Sweden (‘EUL00108’, ‘LP21’, ‘EUL00109’, ‘LP23’, and ‘EUL00104’). Therefore, we investigated genetic differentiation among geographic populations through an analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) [ 49 ].…”