But "thatprobablysays more about the lackofsamplinginpigflu than anything else," said Andrew Rambaut, a University of Edinburghviralgeneticist who has studiedswineflu.
H1N1 is a more appropriate label for this flu, because a direct link from pig to human has not been established, according to Professor Marie Gramer's who studies swine disease at the University of Minnesota.
Shaman converted the guinea pig data from relative humidity to absolute humidity and found the link between air moisture and flu spread got much stronger.
That experiment was based on the long-held notion that a pandemic strain is more likely to emerge when a flu virus mixes its genes with another virus in an animal host, such as a pig.