Virus Taxonomy

There is an internationally agreed scheme within which viron characteristics can be assigned as these constitute five main hierarchical levels; order, family, subfamily, genus and species. Virus orders all have the suffix -virales and virus families have the suffix -viridae whilst a sub-family is denoted by -virinae.Virus genera are denoted by the suffix -virus. Only two of the orders discovered so far contain viruses that are able to infect animals. The first is Mononegavirales which contains the families Paramyxoviridae, Rhabdoviridae, Bornaviridae and Filoviridae. The second order is Nidovirales which comprises Coronaviridae and Arteriviridae.

For a list of viruses by viral species please see Category:Viruses

For a list of viruses by animal species please see Viruses by Species.