ICTV Report

Book: Jingchuvirales

Family: Chuviridae

Genus: Culicidavirus

 

Distinguishing features

Culicidaviruses are primarily distinguished from viruses of other genera in the family based on nucleic acid sequence and organization differences (Di Paola et al., 2022). Members of the genus Culicidavirus have L protein sequences that are >31% identical to each other.

Genome organization and replication

Culicidaviruses have nonsegmented linear genomes of 11.2–12.0 kb with three ORFs encoding a glycoprotein (GP), a nucleoprotein (NP), a large (L) protein with an RNA-directed RNA polymerase (RdRP) domain, and/or proteins of unknown function (Li et al., 2015, Hang et al., 2016, Sadeghi et al., 2018). The replication cycle of culicidaviruses remains to be elucidated.

Biology

Culicidaviruses have been associated with dipteran insects as follows:

  • Culex mosquito virus 4 (ClMV4) has been associated with mosquitoes (culicid Culex tritaeniorhynchus Giles, 1901) in the USA (Sadeghi et al., 2018);
  • Culex mosquito virus 5 (ClMV5) has been associated with mosquitoes (culicid Culex tritaeniorhynchus Giles, 1901) in the USA (Sadeghi et al., 2018);
  • Imjin River virus 1 (IjRV1) has been associated with mosquitoes (culicid Culex tritaeniorhynchus Giles, 1901) in South Korea (Hang et al., 2016); and
  • Wǔhàn mosquito virus 8 (WhMV8) has been associated with mosquitoes (culicid Culex tritaeniorhynchus Giles, 1901) in China (Li et al., 2015).

Species demarcation criteria

Members of different species have amino-acid identities of complete L sequences of <90% (Di Paola et al., 2022).