Abstract
Viruses are the most abundant biological entities in the world's oceans. Their potential control on phytoplankton and bacterioplankton dynamics and diversity, and consequent effect on the flow of energy and matter in food webs, is now 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 modelling the role of viruses is, undoubtedly, one of the upcoming frontiers to be crossed in modelling 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.
Highlights
When the study of marine viruses had its boost back in the 1980’s, one of the most significant findings was that they are more abundant in marine ecosystems than previously thought, frequently more abundant than bacteria (Bergh et al, 1989; Børsheim et al, 1990; Bratbak et al, 1990; Proctor and Fuhrman, 1990; Suttle et al, 1991)
The first section presents a brief review of the knowledge on the roles of virus since its heydays in the 1990’s up to the recent findings on the processes involved in the dynamics of viruses-host relationships; the second section tackles (a) how this knowledge has been incorporated into biogeochemical models along with (b) some implication of their inclusion
Initial attempts at modeling the role of viruses in bacterial mortality relied on model-based interpretation of the percentage of bacteria diverted to dissolved organic matter (DOM) (Noble and Fuhrman, 1999; Thingstad, 2000)
Summary
When the study of marine viruses had its boost back in the 1980’s, one of the most significant findings was that they are more abundant in marine ecosystems than previously thought, frequently more abundant than bacteria (Bergh et al, 1989; Børsheim et al, 1990; Bratbak et al, 1990; Proctor and Fuhrman, 1990; Suttle et al, 1991). The studies showed a natural abundance of viruses typically on the order of 1010 L−1, but ranging from 3 × 108 L−1 to 1011 L−1 (Fuhrman, 1999; Noble and Fuhrman, 1999; Wilhelm and Suttle, 1999) This was, unquestionably, one of the most substantial advances in marine biology by the end of the twentieth century. 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. The first section presents a brief review of the knowledge on the roles of virus since its heydays in the 1990’s up to the recent findings on the processes involved in the dynamics of viruses-host relationships; the second section tackles (a) how this knowledge has been incorporated into biogeochemical models along with (b) some implication of their inclusion
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