title: Frequency of morphological phage descriptions.
abstract: Bacteriophages are listed by morphotypes and host genera. At least 4.007 phages, belonging to 13 virus families, have been described since 1960. About 3,850 phages (96%) are tailed and 154 phages (4%) are cubic, filamentous, or pleomorphic. Siphoviridae or phages with long noncontractile tails constitute 60% of tailed phages. Phages are found in over 100 bacterial genera including archaebacteria and rickettsiae. Their distribution is very uneven and probably reflects the evolutionary history of bacteria.
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, Laval University, Quebec, Canada.
authors.forename: H W
authors.initials: HW
authors.lastname: Ackermann
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria; D001435:Bacteriophages / Q000648:ultrastructure