Dataset 1 comprised 29 nucleotide sequences from the P1 structural region (2291 nt) from different HPeV isolates (12 sequences of HPeV1, 1 sequence of HPeV2, 4 sequences of HPeV3, 5 sequences of HPeV4, 2 sequences of HPeV5, 3 sequences of HPeV6, 1 sequence for HPeV7 and 1 sequence for HPeV8). Dataset 2 comprised 199 nucleotide sequences of the VP1 capsid region (647 nt) (117 sequences of HPeV1, 2 sequences of HPeV2, 40 sequences of HPeV3, 18 sequence of HPeV4, 9 sequence of HPeV5, 10 sequences of HPeV6, 1 sequence of HPeV7, 1 sequence of HPeV8 and 1 sequence of HPeV14). To date, sequences of HPeV9-13 have not been made available [32] . The accession numbers of the sequences from both data sets are available in Additional file 1. Sampling date (year) for dataset 1 (1956-2007) and for dataset 2 (1975-2007) was either collected directly from Genbank record or following direct contact with the relevant authors. Multiple alignments of the P1 and VP1 regions of HPeV were conducted in ClustalW [33] and sequences were edited manually with Se-Al v2.0 [34] .