Abstract
Despite the fact that marine viruses have been increasingly studied in the last decade, there is little information on viral abundance and distribution on a global scale. In this study, we report on a global-scale survey covering the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans on viral distribution using flow cytometry. Viruses were stained with the SYBR Green I, which targets only dsDNA viruses. The average viral abundance was 1.10±0.73×107 ml−1 in global surface oceans and decreased from the areas with high chlorophyll concentration (on average, 1.47±0.78×107 ml−1) to the oligotrophic subtropical gyres (on average, 6.34±2.18×106 ml−1). On a large-spatial-scale, viruses displayed significant relationships with both heterotrophic and autotrophic picoplankton abundance, suggesting that viral distribution is dependent on their host cell abundance. Our study provided a basin scale pattern of marine viral distributions and their relationship with major host cells, indicating that viruses play a significant role in the global marine ecosystem.
Highlights
The interests in marine viruses have increased because they are the most abundant group of biological entities in the world’s oceans
A previous study indicated that 6–26% of the photosynthetically fixed carbon is ‘‘shunted’’ to the dissolved organic matter (DOM) pool by viral lysis of cells in marine pelagic systems [5]
The prokaryotic cell components released by viruses might be one of the most important sources of recalcitrant dissolved organic matte (RDOM) in the microbial carbon pump (MCP), which is a conceptual framework of long-term carbon storage in the global ocean [7]
Summary
The interests in marine viruses have increased because they are the most abundant group of biological entities in the world’s oceans. We performed a systematic survey of the abundances of viruses and their major host cells (picoplankton = heterotrophic prokaryotes + Prochlorococcus + Synechococcus + picoeukaryotes, Fig. S1) using flow cytometry during a global expedition cruise covering various coastal and oceanic environments.
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