Family: Kolmioviridae

Genus: Perithurisazvirus

Distinguishing features

Perithurisazviruses include Lonchura striata deltavirus, Pardaliparus venustulus deltavirus, and Taeniopygia guttata deltavirus. Perideltaviruses infect tits, finches, and munias (Iwamoto et al., 2021).

Virion

Virions are unknown.

Nucleic acid

Perideltaviruses have non-segmented, negative-sense, covalently-closed circular RNA (cccRNA) genomes of about 1.7 kb with 55.8-59.4% GC content (Iwamoto et al., 2021).

Proteins

Perithurisazviruses are predicted to express delta antigen (DAg)-like protein (Iwamoto et al., 2021).

Biology

Lonchura striata deltavirus, Pardaliparus venustulus deltavirus, and Taeniopygia guttata deltavirus were discovered in white-rumped munias (estrildid Lonchura striata (Linnaeus, 1766)), yellow-bellied tits (parid Pardaliparus venustulus

(R. Swinhoe, 1870)), and Australian zebra finches (estrildid Taeniopygia castanotis (Gould, 1837)), respectively (Iwamoto et al., 2021).

Species demarcation criteria

The genus currently only includes a single species.