Viruses in the sea

Suttle, Curtis A.

doi:10.1038/nature04160

Cited by 1,908 publications

(1,520 citation statements)

References 79 publications

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“…Viruses of microbes have been linked to central processes across the global oceans, including biogeochemical cycling [9,29,39,43,47,53] and the maintenance and generation of microbial diversity [3, 36,39,47,52]. Virus propagation requires contacting and infecting cells.…”

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confidence: 99%

Re-examination of the relationship between marine virus and microbial cell abundances

et al. 2016

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Marine viruses are critical drivers of ocean biogeochemistry and their abundances vary spatiotemporally in the global oceans, with upper estimates exceeding 10 8 per ml. Over many years, a consensus has emerged that virus abundances are typically 10-fold higher than prokaryote abundances. The use of a fixed-ratio suggests that the relationship between virus and prokaryote abundances is both predictable and linear. However, the true explanatory power of a linear relationship and its robustness across diverse ocean environments is unclear. Here, we compile 5671 prokaryote and virus abundance estimates from 25 distinct marine surveys to characterize the relationship between virus and prokaryote abundances. We find that the median virus-to-prokaryote ratio (VPR) is 10:1 and 16:1 in the near-and sub-surface oceans, respectively. Nonetheless, we observe substantial variation in the VPR and find either no or limited explanatory power using fixed-ratio models. Instead, virus abundances are better described as nonlinear, power-law functions of prokaryote abundances -particularly when considering relationships within distinct marine surveys. Estimated power-laws have scaling exponents that are typically less than 1, signifying that the VPR decreases with prokaryote density, rather than remaining fixed. The emergence of power-law scaling presents a challenge for mechanistic models seeking to understand the ecological causes and consequences of marine virusmicrobe interactions. Such power-law scaling also implies that efforts to average viral effects on microbial mortality and biogeochemical cycles using "representative" abundances or abundanceratios need to be refined if they are to be utilized to make quantitative predictions at regional or global ocean scales.

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confidence: 99%

Re-examination of the relationship between marine virus and microbial cell abundances

et al. 2016

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“…In a way, the extensive knowledge gathered over the last two decades on the role and importance of viruses in aquatic systems, clearly expressed in exhaustive reviews (e.g., Proctor, 1997;Fuhrman, 1999;Wommack and Colwell, 2000;Weinbauer, 2004;Suttle, 2005;Dunigan et al, 2006;Brum and Sullivan, 2015), has not been followed by its inclusion into marine biogeochemical models. This paper reviews some early knowledge on the activity of viruses and the follow-up (or lack of it) by the modeling community.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This was, unquestionably, one of the most substantial advances in marine biology by the end of the twentieth century. Given their size, viruses are a component of dissolved organic matter (DOM) (Benner et al, 1992;Middelboe et al, 2003), and account for 1-5% of the standing stock of marine biomass, despite their abundance (Libes, 1992;Suttle, 2005;Sandaa, 2008). Apparently, viruses are the smallest and surely the most abundant organisms in the sea, and the full implications of their role in the microbial loop is still to be determined.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bridging the Gap between Knowing and Modeling Viruses in Marine Systems—An Upcoming Frontier

Mateus

2017

Front. Mar. Sci.

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Viruses are the most abundant biological entities in the world's oceans. Their potential control on the dynamics and diversity of bacterioplankton and some phytoplankton groups, and consequent effect on the flow of energy and matter in food webs, may be argued as beyond dispute. Paradoxically, their importance seems to be persistently underestimated by marine modelers, frequently by exclusion, despite the uninterrupted volume of knowledge advanced during the past decades. Bridging the gap between knowing and modeling the role of viruses is, undoubtedly, one of the upcoming frontiers to be crossed in modeling the plankton. This paper has a two-fold objective: (1) review the knowledge on the roles of viruses in marine systems that has been put forward over the past decades, and (2) see how viruses have been incorporated into marine ecosystem models, along with the factors that are limiting their inclusion.

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“…It has been estimated that the world's oceans may contain on the order of 10 30 virus particles (Suttle, 2005b). Marine viral genetic diversity is extremely high.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%