Ratification vote on taxonomic proposals to the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (2013)

In accordance with the statutes of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV), the final stage in the process of making changes to the Universal Scheme of Virus Classification is the ratification of taxonomic proposals by ICTV Members. This can occur either at a plenary meeting of ICTV, held during an International Congress of Virology conference, or by circulation of proposals by mail followed by a ballot. As in recent years, a list of proposals that had been subjected to the full, multi-stage review process was prepared and presented on the ICTVonline web pages by December 2012. This review process involved input from the ICTV Study Groups and Subcommittees, other interested virologists, and the ICTV Executive Committee. These proposals were submitted to, and discussed by, the ICTV Executive Committee over the past two years and represent changes to virus taxonomy from that published in the Ninth Report [1] and the changes subsequently approved in February 2012 [2]. The ratification process was performed entirely by email. The proposals were sent electronically via email on 14 January 2013 to the 165 members of ICTV, namely the ICTV executive committee members, life members, ICTV subcommittee members and ICTV national representatives. Members were then requested to vote on whether or not to ratify the taxonomic proposals (voting closed on 14 February 2013). The following are the taxonomic proposals that were ratified by ICTV members in February 2013. The proposals are organized by subcommittee, and then the filename posted on-line, which contained the specific information about the proposals. Note that by ICTV convention, all approved taxon names are italicized. The details of all these proposals can be obtained at http://www.ictvonline. org/Official_ICTV_Proposals.htm.