International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV)

The ICTV Report

ICTV Report on Virus Taxonomy: The Classification and Nomenclature of Viruses
NEW Master Species List

Master Species List 2018b; MSL #34
Orthography

How to write a virus name
Proposal Templates

2019 templates for submitting taxonomy proposals.

Current News

In defence of taxonomic governance

A paper has recently been published, "In defence of taxonomic governance" in the journal Organisms Diversity & Evolution by Dr. Stijn Conix of the Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium. This paper discusses some of the different approaches utilized to govern the process of taxonomic classification by taxonomists working in different biological disciplines. It uses the ICTV and virus classification as one example of a highly unified, successful approach to taxonomic governance. Conix, S. Org Divers Evol (2019) 19: 87. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13127-019-00391-6.

The Virus Metadata Resource

The Virus Metadata Resource (VMR) is a downloadable spreadsheet that provides information on exemplar viruses for each species. This information includes GenBank and RefSeq accession numbers for exemplar viruses and isolate and common names for viruses belonging to a species. A new VMR based on MSL34 was posted on May 19, 2019. This release adds information on the known categories of hosts infected by the virus or the source environment from which the virus was isolated.

New 2019 Taxonomy Proposal Templates now available

New templates for submitting proposals for new taxonomy are now available from https://talk.ictvonline.org/files/taxonomy-proposal-templates/m/templates.To prepare and submit proposals, please download all three files and read the Help file for detailed information on the submission process.

The deadline for this year's proposal submissions to Subcommittee Chairs is May 19, 2019.

New ICTV Life Member:
Mike Adams

We are pleased to announce that Dr Michael J Adams has been elected as a Life Member of the ICTV, following nomination by the President, recommendation by the Executive Committee, and ratification by the ICTV membership. Mike has been involved in the work of the ICTV in many different roles since 2001, and most recently served as ICTV Business Secretary from 2011 until 2017. More than anything, Mike’s good humour and constant wisdom were greatly appreciated by his colleagues on the Executive Committee. We wish him all the best in his retirement, and trust that he will be able to find much fulfilment outside of the world of virus taxonomy.

Keeping up with virus taxonomy

The blog Microbe Post, from the Microbiology Society is now highlighting ICTV Profiles published in the Journal of General Virology.

Why virus taxonomy is important

The article, "Why virus taxonomy is important", published in Microbiology Today by Stuart Siddell, ICTV Vice President, discusses the importance of virus taxonomy and its role in helping to define the evolutionary relationships between viruses and understand the consequences of virus diversity.

ICTV in Nucleic Acids Research

An article appearing in the Nucleic Acids Research 2018 Database issue, "Virus taxonomy: the database of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV)" describes the ICTV database and the web-based tools available to query that database: Lefkowitz EJ, Dempsey DM, Hendrickson RC, Orton RJ, Siddell SG, Smith DB. Nucleic Acids Res. 2017 Oct 13. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkx932. PubMed PMID: 29040670.

Past News

For previous news announcements, please see https://talk.ictvonline.org/information/w/news

Fifty Years of Virus Taxonomy

Navigating Menus

Information: Members, FAQs, Code and Statutes, History, News, Newsletters, VDN articles.
Taxonomy: Current and historical ICTV taxonomic databases
Files: Taxonomy Proposals, Master Species Lists, Proposal templates, and other ICTV-related files.
Discussions: Discussions about the ICTV and virus taxonomy.
Study Groups: Information on virus families provided by ICTV Study Groups.
Meetings: Reports from ICTV-sponsored meetings addressing current problems in virus taxonomy.
ICTV Reports: Online versions of the current 10th and previous 9th Reports on Virus Taxonomy.

Items of Interest

	New! Updated ICTV 2018b Taxonomy
The new 2018b ICTV taxonomy is now available online at http://ictvonline.org/virusTaxonomy.asp.

The new ICTV Master Species List 34, 2018b is available for download as an Excel Spreadsheet.
This new release contains taxonomic changes approved by the ICTV membership in February, 2019.
This release moves all RNA viruses under the new taxon, Riboviria, at the rank of Realm.
The release will be described in an upcoming Archives of Virology, Virology Division News article.
Official taxonomy proposals representing all of the taxonomic changes approved by the ICTV since the publication of the ICTV 8th Report can be found here:
https://talk.ictvonline.org/files/ictv_official_taxonomy_updates_since_the_8th_report/.

ICTV Report Available Online

The ICTV Report on Virus Taxonomy (also known as the Online (10th) Report) is available in a freely accessible format from this web site at http://ictv.global/report. Over a three-year cycle, ICTV Study Groups will update the information in the chapters of the 9th Report as well as produce chapters for newly created virus taxa.

Journal of General Virology:
ICTV Virus Taxonomy Profiles

Summaries of the Online Report chapters are published in the Journal of General Virology, ICTV Virus Taxonomy Profiles section. These summaries are linked to the full Online Report chapters on the ICTV website and are indexed in PubMed.

How to write virus and species names

A document detailing the ICTV's recommendation for how to write a virus name is available here. (Updated May 28, 2019)

Submitting Taxonomic Proposals

ICTV welcomes taxonomic proposals from any interested individual. To submit a proposal, download and complete the relevant parts of the taxonomic template (available at http://talk.ictvonline.org/files/folders/templates/default.aspx) and e-mail it to the appropriate subcommittee chair (Animal DNA Viruses and Retroviruses, Animal dsRNA and ssRNA- Viruses, Animal ssRNA+ Viruses, Bacterial and Archaeal Viruses, Fungal and Protist Viruses, or Plant viruses). Names and e-mail addresses can be found at http://www.ictvonline.org/executiveCommittee.asp.

Help!

For questions or help, send an email to info@ictvonline.org

Recent Activity

Support

ICTV gratefully acknowledges financial support from the American Society for Virology, Microbiology Society, the Virology Division of IUMS, and Wellcome. ICTV also very gratefully acknowledges the support it receives from all its Executive Committee members, Study Group members and National Representatives who volunteer a huge amount of their time and financial support to ensure that ICTV continues to function for the good of virology. We would also like to thank Donald Dempsey and Curtis Hendrickson from the University of Alabama at Birmingham for their work on the development of the web site and taxonomy database.

International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV)