The global distribution of <i>Banana bunchy top virus</i> reveals little evidence for frequent recent, human-mediated long distance dispersal events.

"sequences from this study have been deposited in genbank (accession numbers km607005 - km607859)."

"Conflict of interest : None declared."

"We thank the students of Tonga College for their help in some of the sample collection in the Kingdom of Tonga. D.S was supported by a postgraduate scholarship from the Marsden Fund of New Zealand (UOC0903). S.K. was supported by a scholarship from the School of Biological Sciences (University of Canterbury, New Zealand). D.P.M., G.W.H., and A.V. are supported by the National Research Foundation of South Africa. P.L. acknowledges support from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme [FP7/2007-2013] under Grant Agreement no. 278433-PREDEMICS and ERC Grant agreement no. 260864. J.T., M.S., and K.C. acknowledge the support of Horticulture Innovation Australia (formerly Horticulture Australia Limited). This work was supported by the Marsden Fund Council from Government funding, administered by the Royal Society of New Zealand (grant UOC0903) awarded to A.V."