Taxacom: Big changes / increases in virus taxonomy - who knew?

[Tony Rees]

Dear Taxacomers,

I recently came to update the virus taxonomy in IRMNG (last updated from
the 2018 ICTV list) only to discover that not only had there been an
explosion in higher taxonomic ranks including completely new taxa at realm
and virus-only kingdom levels, but the number of accepted genera has blown
out from under 900 to over 3,000 in the intervening 6 or so years, to say
nothing of species. Current statistics from https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fictv.global%2Ftaxonomy&data=05%7C02%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C8156e5b840e1459fbfdd08dd35df370b%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638725954997252577%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=43lFM1BmDjs8BTPa9dLnmscHRhdqKdbideQu7wzRdjY%3D&reserved=0
read:
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Virus Taxonomy: 2023 Release
EC 55, Jena, Germany, August 2023
Email ratification April 2024 (MSL #39); release v4, October 30, 2024
6 realms, 10 kingdoms, 18 phyla, 2 subphyla, 41 classes, 81 orders, 11
suborders, 314 families, 200 subfamilies, 3522 genera, 84 subgenera, 14690
species
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Cited reference works on the ICTV website include such exemplars as:
Muscatt G, Kuhn JH, Millard A, Bending GD, Jameson E, 2023
"Create 418 new genera and 1,706 new species in the class Leviviricetes,
move and rename 375 species, and abolish 114 genera and 48 species."

As apparent from this example, a number of previously recognised genera
have also been abolished (more than 350 at my count) with species
reassigned elsewhere in the main, in most cases to other newly erected
genera (the concepts of typification and date priority do not appear to be
invoked in the virus world), although in a subset of cases the genus name
has simply been changed to a newer one for any of several reasons, with the
old genus name treated as a synonym of the newer one.

At any rate this keeps workers such as myself, attempting to track such
changes in our own system (albeit with a few years' latency), not short of
a job or several. As an aside, I note that NCBI taxonomy as well as
Catalogue of Life do appear to have taken these changes on board sooner
than myself. One might hope - optimistically perhaps - that the rate of
change might tail off a bit now that these massive changes have taken
place, but who knows... Any other comments welcome,

Regards Tony

Tony Rees, New South Wales, Australia
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