[Taxonomy of Apis mellifera viruses]

With the exception of the filamentous virus, all viruses of the honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) are single stranded RNA viruses. At the time of their discovery, they have been classified as picorna-like viruses. Progress in molecular biology allowed sequencing some of them and revealed they were differed from picornaviruses. Two new taxons were therefore created: the Iflavirus genus and the Dicistroviridae family, which includes the genus Cripavirus, the unique genus of this family. These viruses differ from the picornaviruses at the genomic level by the order of genes and, in the case of dicistrovirus, by the organization of these genes in two ORF, each having their own regulation system. The phylogenetic analysis of members of both taxons generally shown only few similarities at the nucleotide and amino-acid level. However, within each taxon, some viruses show strong similarities, reflecting a probable common origin. Geographical isolates of the same viruses showgenetic and protein variability, which are new illustrations of the potential evolution of RNA viruses.