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

Fri Jan 17 04:34:19 CST 2025

The virus that controls spruce sawflies is (was) at one time
called Borrelinavirus hercyniae it seems... unfortunately I have not been
able to determine the current status of this name via the ICTV web portal,
which is a bit peculiar :(  Also above I mis-typed the virus used to
control feral rabbits, I should have written Calicivirus not Calcivirus.
Rabbit calicivirus now seems to be called Lagovirus europaeus, the only
species in that genus, in the new binomial nomenclature, in family
Caliciviridae; Calicivirus as a genus name appears in the 1981 ICTV
classification but it seems, not thereafter, either having changed its name
or been abolished (both of which seem to happen sometimes in the virus
world, ours not to reason why...)

Regards, Tony

On Fri, 17 Jan 2025 at 18:12, Tony Rees <tonyrees49 at gmail.com> wrote:

> For pine plantations above, I probably mean spruce plantations, apologies
> for that but it was 50 years ago!!
>
> On Fri, 17 Jan 2025, 6:10 pm Tony Rees, <tonyrees49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Interesting, I might have expected a little more interest among
>> Taxacomers regarding developments in virus taxonomy but hey, the little
>> critters are mostly harmless it seems. Except...
>>
>> As it happens, viruses have intersected my life one or twice even though
>> my main interests have always involved larger things. Once back in the 70s,
>> a colleague at University was studying virology while I did Bot. and Zoo.,
>> I could not understand the attraction but perhaps I was wrong in hindsight!
>> Later I was a contract worker for a while for a study that was trying to
>> control spruce sawflies, pests of pine plantations in the UK, by means of
>> introduced viruses. Later still in Tasmania, I recall the state environment
>> department doing intermittent releases of rabbit calcivirus to knock down
>> the numbers of those which were in pest proportions at times. To say
>> nothing of world events since Jan 2020 or so. So I guess, yes, virus
>> studies are important!
>>
>> On Thu, 16 Jan 2025, 4:14 pm Tony Rees, <tonyrees49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Bevan, I purposefully refrained from including the changeover from
>>> the previous "vernacular style" species names to new, binomial style names
>>> of the "genus species" type as adopted in other groups for many centuries
>>> now, but yes, that is an additional, and non trivial, issue to be managed
>>> by all compilers of such names.
>>>
>>> Regards, Tony
>>>
>>> On Thu, 16 Jan 2025, 3:48 pm Bevan Weir, <WeirB at landcareresearch.co.nz>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> It is certainly a massive change moving to a (pseudo)binomial system.
>>>> I spoke with one of the guys who is the chair of an ICTV 'study group'
>>>> and he explained it to me, but it seemed to me a compromise to keep almost
>>>> everyone happy with four different ways of forming names (for plant viruses
>>>> at least). The ICTV website is quite good, although some digging is needed
>>>> for historic synonymy.
>>>>
>>>> I have not yet got the courage to update all of the virus names for NZ,
>>>> but it will be a big project, for example 'Grapevine Syrah virus-1' is now
>>>> Marafivirus syrahense:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbiotanz.landcareresearch.co.nz%2Fscientific-names%2Fcd45ebe5-14d9-467a-9b61-45ad117955e5&data=05%7C02%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Cb47ccacad70f41a2fc5708dd36e2872a%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638727070576746293%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C60000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=MdU9YDI7P1z7cargxZhqB2KSFr3ScV2wYgPkHO5fio0%3D&reserved=0
>>>>
>>>> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fictv.global%2Ftaxonomy%2Ftaxondetails%3Ftaxnode_id%3D202102349%26taxon_name%3DGrapevine%2520Syrah%2520virus%25201&data=05%7C02%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Cb47ccacad70f41a2fc5708dd36e2872a%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638727070576764325%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C60000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=AF%2FSTzDwAwgk7sdLrjJFjivQ7YIY%2BT7ZaQrrZs1BMRY%3D&reserved=0
>>>>
>>>> Bevan
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Taxacom <taxacom-bounces at lists.ku.edu> On Behalf Of Tony Rees
>>>> via Taxacom
>>>> Sent: Thursday, 16 January 2025 4:38 pm
>>>> To: taxacom <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
>>>> Subject: Taxacom: Big changes / increases in virus taxonomy - who knew?
>>>>
>>>> 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%7Cb47ccacad70f41a2fc5708dd36e2872a%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638727070576772522%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C60000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=6GbP7g9hDC%2Fv27PHXz7MOLveVPFUF5E0KWUHxAACLKk%3D&reserved=0
>>>> read:
>>>> ----------
>>>> 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
>>>> ----------
>>>> 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
>>>> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fabout.me%2FTonyRees&data=05%7C02%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Cb47ccacad70f41a2fc5708dd36e2872a%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638727070576780548%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C60000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=lwTurOXz04ikfBGMKQhvTehgjr45%2BB7R4%2FQePpT8ZlI%3D&reserved=0
>>>> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irmng.org%2F&data=05%7C02%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Cb47ccacad70f41a2fc5708dd36e2872a%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638727070576789819%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C60000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=aXAlPJRMq0B3xOEtbiSFHWpfiYyhS7aymI6J97v%2FeUo%3D&reserved=0
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