International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV)

The ICTV Report

ICTV Report on Virus Taxonomy: The Classification and Nomenclature of Viruses
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

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.

ICTV Online Report on Virus Taxonomy

The ICTV Report on Virus Taxonomy (also known as the 10th Report) is available in an open access format from this web site at https://ictv.global/report. ICTV Study Groups are updating the information from 9th Report chapters; producing chapters for newly created virus taxa; and updating current chapters as new taxa are created and new viruses discovered.

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.

Useful Resources

ICTV Taxonomy Release #34: 2018b

The new 2018b ICTV taxonomy is now available online at https://ictv.global/taxonomy.

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. One major change is that all RNA viruses have been moved under the new taxon, Riboviria, at the rank of Realm.

A paper describing this release has been published in an Archives of Virology, Virology Division News article:"Changes to virus taxonomy and the International Code of Virus Classification and Nomenclature ratified by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (2019)".

Official taxonomy proposals representing all of the taxonomic changes approved by the ICTV since the publication of the ICTV 8th Report can be found at https://ictv.global/Official_ICTV_Proposals.htm.

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 September 9, 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.

How to write virus and species names

A document and FAQ detailing the ICTV's recommendation for how to write virus and species names is now available. (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 proposal template 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).

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)