The moiety consists of all components in humans and all components in birds that the virus may interact with in order to reproduce. Similarly, the female moiety of the rabies virus is found in various mammals. And that rabies moiety is the same or similar in different species susceptible to the disease. That's why the rabies virus can cross from one species to another.
The theory of evolution and the concept of species were originally developed for higher plants and animals. Then, following advances in microbiology, there was an effort to extend that idea of species to viruses--even though there was no prior covenant from on high that such an extension was necessarily going to be completely valid.
If a higher plant or animal species consists of related organisms able to breed with each other, then perhaps, I should be finally saying the following to state how I think a viral species should be defined: A viral species consists ot those viruses able to reproduce by means of a given female moiety, as that moiety exists in one or more higher species.
The existing species definition would thus be stretched a little because that female moiety wouldn't necessarily be a complete organism--though it would need to consist of components found in a living cell, or in a living organism, or in a group of living species.
In the last case, the different (non-viral) species in the group are seen to be related to each other--with the susceptibility to the given virus as the factor defining the relationship.
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