Authors: M J Adams E J Lefkowitz A M Q King E B Carstens
Publish Date: 2013/07/09
Volume: 158, Issue: 12, Pages: 2633-2639
Abstract
The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses ICTV http//wwwictvonlineorg/ is a committee of Virology Division of the International Union of Microbiological Societies and its operation is governed by Statutes agreed with Virology Division The classification and nomenclature of viruses is then subject to rules formalized into a Code required by Statute 81The need for a review of the Statutes and Code became clear during editorial work involved in production of the Ninth ICTV Report 1 Changes to these documents require the approval of the ICTV Executive Committee EC and the full ICTV membership Changes to the Statutes also require the agreement of Virology DivisionThe changes described in this article were discussed and agreed by the ICTV EC over a period of more than two years Notification of a ballot was sent via email on 14 January 2013 to the 165 members of ICTV namely the ICTV EC Members Life Members ICTV Subcommittee Members and ICTV National Representatives Members were then requested to vote on whether or not to ratify the proposals voting closed on 14 February 2013 The return rate of votes was approximately 41 and all proposed changes were accepted mostly unanimously The only significant exception was the proposed change to the species definition in Rule 321 Rule 320 in the latest version of the code which was approved by 4521 with two abstentionsIn this article we present the new version of the Code highlighted in bold to show those parts that have recently been changed Those changes are then explained in the sections that follow It should be noted that some rules were deleted and that some renumbering of sections has therefore taken place In recent years the Code has been published with some explanatory Comments from the EC and the opportunity has been taken to revise and update these where necessary
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