Abstract
Viruses are non-living, acellular entities, and the most abundant biological agents on earth. They are widely acknowledged as having the capacity to influence global biogeochemical cycles by infecting the bacterial and archaeal populations that regulate carbon and nutrient turnover. Evidence suggests that the majority of viruses in wetlands are bacteriophages, but despite their importance, studies on how viruses control the prokaryotic community and the concomitant impacts on ecosystem function (such as carbon cycling and greenhouse gas flux) in wetlands are rare. Here we investigate virus-prokaryote interactions in freshwater wetland ecosystems in the context of their potential influence on biogeochemical cycling. Specifically, we (1) synthesize existing literature to establish current understanding of virus-prokaryote interactions, focusing on the implications for wetland greenhouse gas dynamics and (2) identify future research priorities. Viral dynamics in freshwater wetlands have received much less attention compared to those in marine ecosystems. However, based on our literature review, within the last 10 years, viral ecology studies on freshwater wetlands have increased twofold. Despite this increase in literature, the potential implication of viral infections on greenhouse gas emission dynamics is still a knowledge gap. We hypothesize that the rate of greenhouse gas emissions and the pool of sequestered carbon could be strongly linked to the type and rate of viral infection. Viral replication mechanism choice will consequently influence the microbial efficiency of organic matter assimilation and thus the ultimate fate of carbon as a greenhouse gas or stored in soils.
Highlights
The most widely used definition of wetlands under the Ramsar convention is “areas of marsh, fen, peatland or water, whether natural or artificial, permanent or temporary, with water that is static or flowing, fresh, brackish or salt, including areas of marine water the depth of which at low tide does not exceed six metres.” According to this definition, what is formally known as “wetland” spans a huge and diverse group of ecosystems that are all characterized by the presence of water and aquatic macrophytes (Mitsch and Gosselink, 2007)
Research investigating the microbial communities and functions involved in wetland carbon cycling has primarily focused on the prokaryotic component
The role of viruses has been vastly under-studied, the ecological virus-prokaryote relationship could be fundamentally to the wetland carbon cycling
Summary
The most widely used definition of wetlands under the Ramsar convention is “areas of marsh, fen, peatland or water, whether natural or artificial, permanent or temporary, with water that is static or flowing, fresh, brackish or salt, including areas of marine water the depth of which at low tide does not exceed six metres.” According to this definition, what is formally known as “wetland” spans a huge and diverse group of ecosystems that are all characterized by the presence of water (temporary or permanently) and aquatic macrophytes (Mitsch and Gosselink, 2007).
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