(A) Timeline of studies focusing on orthornaviran RNA viruses in biotic samples and natural environments. Relevant (non‐exhaustive) literature on orthornaviran RNA viruses derived from hosts from natural ecosystems published from the 1960s to October 2022 are listed by first‐author name. Sources of the RNA viruses are shown for each study, with icons described in the legend. (B) Rarefaction curve adapted from a previous study (Neri et al., 2022), representing the accumulation of unique clusters as a function of the number of analysed samples. (C) Global RNA‐directed RNA polymerase (RdRp) phylogenies showing established and, in quotation marks, proposed orthornaviran phyla, with reverse transcriptase (RT)‐encoding RNA viruses (ribovirian pararnavirans) as the root of the trees. Adapted, simplified figures (left, middle, and right) of the phylogenetic trees were built from datasets in three previous studies, respectively (Neri et al., 2022; Wolf et al., 2018; Zayed et al., 2022).