Fig. 1: Overview of the current extent of the known protist virosphere.

a Protist supergroups are shown on the x-axis while viral groups are shown on the y-axis. Highlighted squares on the matrix represent a group of viruses infecting a respective group of protists. The clades Viridiplantae, Fungi and Metazoa were removed from the dendrogram (latest eukaryotic phylogeny was retrieved and adapted from Keeling & Eglit, 2023²²³. Viral groups at family or genus level (unclassified cressdnavirus and preplasmivirus at phylum level and unclassified imitervirus and picornavirus at order level) are also on the y-axis. b The viral counts at genus level for each virus class (DNA or RNA, single-stranded or double-stranded) were retrieved from VirusHostdb²²⁴ and manual curation of the literature. Abbreviatures: double stranded (ds), single stranded (ss), negative sense (−), positive sense (+), double-stranded DNA genome that has an RNA intermediate (dsDNA-RT). Detailed information regarding viruses and respective hosts used to make this figure can be found in supplementary data file (tab 1).