Elements of a theory for the mechanisms controlling abundance, diversity, and biogeochemical role of lytic bacterial viruses in aquatic systems
2000/09/01 by T. Frede Thingstad · 1,058 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Environmental Science · #Abundance (ecology) #Bacteria #Bacterial cell structure #Bacterial virus #Bacteriophage #Bacteriophages and microbial interactions #Biochemistry #Biogeochemical cycle #Biology #Ecology #Escherichia coli #Evolution and Genetic Dynamics #Genetics #Lysis #Lytic cycle #Microbial Community Ecology and Physiology #Virology #Virus
paper · doi:10.4319/lo.2000.45.6.1320
published in Limnology and Oceanography 45(6), 1320-1328 (Wiley)
openalex publication_date 2000/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
Abstract
Mechanisms controlling virus abundance and partitioning of loss of bacterial production between viral lysis and protozoan predation are discussed within the framework of an idealized Lotka‐Volterra–type model. This combines nonselective protozoan predation with host‐selective viral lysis of bacteria. The analysis leads to a reciprocal relationship between bacterial diversity and viruses, in which coexistence of competing bacterial species is ensured by the presence of viruses that ‘kill the winner,’ whereas the differences in substrate affinity between the coexisting bacterial species determine viral abundance. The ability of the model to reproduce published observations, such as an approximate 1:10 ratio between bacterial and viral abundance, and the ability of viral lysis to account for 10–50% of bacterial loss are discussed.
Citations
Cited by
- A model of algal‐virus population dynamics reveals underlying controls on material transfer
- Antibiotic perturbation of the human gut phageome preserves its individuality and promotes blooms of virulent phages
- Top-Down Control of Diesel-Degrading Prokaryotic Communities
- Effects of Bacteriophages on the Population Dynamics of Four Strains of Pelagic Marine Bacteria
- Antibiotic perturbation of the human gut phageome preserves its individuality and promotes blooms of virulent phages
- Species interactions determine plasmid persistence in a 3-member bacterial community
- When glaciers and ice sheets melt: consequences for planktonic organisms
- Modelling spatial and temporal patterns in size-structured marine plankton communities: top–down and bottom–up controls
- Grazer and viral impacts on microbial growth and mortality in the southern California Current Ecosystem
- Arctic Ocean virus communities and their seasonality, bipolarity, and prokaryotic associations
- Sub-daily Bermuda Atlantic Time Series virus sampling reveals taxonomy, host, and functional differences at the population, but not community level
- Sea ice as habitat for microalgae, bacteria, virus, fungi, meio- and macrofauna: A review of an extreme environment
- Increased nutrient diversity can induce loss of microbial diversity through enhanced resource uptake
- Accounting for cellular-level variation in lysis: implications for virus–host dynamics
- Culturomics as a tool to better understand the human milk microbiota and host–microbiota interactions
- Illuminating the newly produced viruses within the virosphere with bioorthogonal noncanonical amino acid tagging and single-virus genomic sequencing technologies
- Interactions between bacterial and phage communities in natural environments
- Density Dependence Promotes Species Coexistence and Provides a Unifying Explanation for Distinct Productivity–Diversity Relationships
- Viral community succession during cadaver decomposition and its potential for estimating postmortem intervals
- Episomal virus maintenance enables bacterial population recovery from infection and promotes virus–bacterial coexistence
- Genomic analysis of Ostreococcus tauri -infecting viruses reveals a hypervariable region associated with host–virus interactions
- Redox-constrained microbial ecology dictates nitrogen loss versus retention
- Explaining microbial population genomics through phage predation
- What factors structure Anthozoan microbial communities?
- Food web assembly rules
- Intraspecific predator interference promotes biodiversity in ecosystems
- Complex Interactions Between Aquatic Organisms and Their Chemical Environment Elucidated from Different Perspectives
- Bridging the Gap between Knowing and Modeling Viruses in Marine Systems—An Upcoming Frontier
- Microbial interactions: from networks to models
- Microbes Drive Evolution of Animals and Plants: the Hologenome Concept
- Coral Reef Microorganisms in a Changing Climate
- Marine Viruses: Community Dynamics, Diversity and Impact on Microbial Processes
- Re-examination of the relationship between marine virus and microbial cell abundances
- The Selective Value of Bacterial Shape
- Severe population collapses and species extinctions in multihost epidemic dynamics
- Marine viruses — major players in the global ecosystem
- Phage puppet masters of the marine microbial realm
- Spatial vulnerability: bacterial arrangements, microcolonies, and biofilms as responses to low rather than high phage densities. [europepmc]
- Virus-host swinging party in the oceans: Incorporating biological complexity into paradigms of antagonistic coexistence. [europepmc]
- Ocean viruses and their effects on microbial communities and biogeochemical cycles. [europepmc]
- Movers and shakers: influence of bacteriophages in shaping the mammalian gut microbiota. [europepmc]
- Phage-induced diversification improves host evolvability. [europepmc]
- Coevolutionary diversification creates nested-modular structure in phage-bacteria interaction networks. [europepmc]
- Environmental bacteriophages: viruses of microbes in aquatic ecosystems. [europepmc]
- Microbes Drive Evolution of Animals and Plants: the Hologenome Concept. [europepmc]
- Microdiversification of a Pelagic Polynucleobacter Species Is Mainly Driven by Acquisition of Genomic Islands from a Partially Interspecific Gene Pool. [europepmc]
- New Insights into Pathogenic Vibrios Affecting Bivalves in Hatcheries: Present and Future Prospects. [europepmc]
- Lysogeny is prevalent and widely distributed in the murine gut microbiota. [europepmc]
- Cross-resistance is modular in bacteria-phage interactions. [europepmc]
- Diel transcriptional response of a California Current plankton microbiome to light, low iron, and enduring viral infection. [europepmc]
- Persistence and Decay of Fecal Microbiota in Aquatic Habitats. [europepmc]
- Gut Bacteriophage: Current Understanding and Challenges. [europepmc]
- Nutrient levels and trade-offs control diversity in a serial dilution ecosystem. [europepmc]
- Shining Light on Human Gut Bacteriophages. [europepmc]
- Autochthonous faecal viral transfer (FVT) impacts the murine microbiome after antibiotic perturbation. [europepmc]
- Negative Frequency-Dependent Selection Is Frequently Confounding. [europepmc]
- Active virus-host interactions at sub-freezing temperatures in Arctic peat soil. [europepmc]
- Phages in the Gut Ecosystem. [europepmc]
- Deciphering Active Prophages from Metagenomes. [europepmc]
- Phage family classification under Caudoviricetes : A review of current tools using the latest ICTV classification framework. [europepmc]
- Bacteriophages playing nice: Lysogenic bacteriophage replication stable in the human gut microbiota. [europepmc]
- Metagenome-derived virus-microbe ratios across ecosystems. [europepmc]
Related