Topic summary
Ebola virus
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Zaire ebolavirus.
Ebola virus and its genus were both originally named for Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), the country where it was first described, and was at first suspected to be a new "strain" of the closely related Marburg virus. The virus was renamed "Ebola virus" in 2010 to avoid confusion. Ebola virus is the single member of the speciesZaire ebolavirus, which is assigned to the genus Ebolavirus, family Filoviridae, order Mononegavirales. The members of the species are called Zaire ebolaviruses. The natural reservoir of Ebola virus is believed to be bats, particularly fruit bats, and it is primarily transmitted between humans and from animals to humans through body fluids.