RHABDOVIRIDAE

A General Introduction has been added to each disease chapter in an attempt to give a brief updated overview of the taxonomic, biological and other characteristics of the virus family or group of bacteria /protozoa that cause disease in livestock and, where relevant, involve wildlife. As the text of the three-volume book Infectious Diseases of Livestock is currently under revision the Editors are aware that there are inconsistencies between the updated introductions to chapters and the content of the chapters themselves. Once the chapters have been updated – a process that is currently underway – these inconsistencies will be removed.

The family Rhabdoviridae contains a large number of diverse viruses, currently numbering 135 species distributed between 18 genera¹. While most members of this family are so far unassociated with disease, some cause important diseases of animals and plants, including rabies (virus species name - Rabies lyssavirus) and rabies-like diseases of humans resulting from infection by related lyssaviruses, vesicular stomatitis in cattle, horses and pigs caused by a number of species in the Vesiculovirus genus and bovine ephemeral fever caused by Bovine fever ephemerovirus in cattle and water buffalo (Table 1).

Rhabdoviridae virions are enveloped with bullet-shaped (sometimes conical or in the case of plant rhabdoviruses, bacilliform), helically-coiled nucleocapsids. They have an extensive host-range that includes mammals (terrestrial and aquatic), birds, fish, reptiles, insects and plants. Together with seven other virus families, Rhabdoviridae are classified within the Order Mononegavirales, indicating that they have negative-sense, single-stranded RNA genomes (usually unsegmented).

Insect vectors are usually responsible for the transmission of members of the Rhabdoviridae to animals and plants.

New members of the family are discovered regularly which means that the number of genera and species increases continually. Furthermore, their discontinuous replication strategy gives rise to genome plasticity resulting in variation in genome organization and gene expression. This has been held to explain their ecological diversity and complex taxonomy².

Table 1 Infections of mammalian livestock caused by viruses of the family Rhabdoviridae

? - infection only confirmed in humans (bat bite)

References

1. International Committee for Taxonomy of Viruses https://talk.ictvonline.org/taxonomy/ (accession date: 26/05/2017)
2. MACLACHLAN N.J. & DUBOVI, E.J. (eds.), 2016. Veterinary Virology, 5th edition, Academic Press.