Abstract
The Southern Ocean microbial ecosystem, with its pronounced seasonal shifts, is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Since viruses are key modulators of microbial abundance, diversity, and evolution, we need a better understanding of the effects of seasonality on the viruses in this region. Our comprehensive exploration of DNA viral diversity in the Southern Ocean reveals a unique and largely uncharted viral landscape, of which 75% was previously unidentified in other oceanic areas. We uncover novel viral taxa at high taxonomic ranks, expanding our understanding of crassphage, polinton-like virus, and virophage diversity. Nucleocytoviricota viruses represent an abundant and diverse group of Antarctic viruses, highlighting their potential as important regulators of phytoplankton population dynamics. Our temporal analysis reveals complex seasonal patterns in marine viral communities (bacteriophages, eukaryotic viruses) which underscores the apparent interactions with their microbial hosts, whilst deepening our understanding of their roles in the world's most sensitive and rapidly changing ecosystem.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 9192 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| Journal | Nature Communications |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 24 Oct 2024 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2024. The Author(s).
Funding
This work was funded by the POMVIDDY project (grant ALWPP.2016.019 awarded to C.P.D.B.) which was supported by the Dutch Research Council (NWO), within the Netherlands Polar Programme. We are grateful to the British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, UK, and the MMB-NIOZ technical staff for the logistical and technical support, as well as Nisma Abdelmalik and Monika Krolikowski for field assistance and Gosse Metz for the Sterivex DNA extractions. We thank the NIOZ Nutrient Lab on Texel for performing the inorganic nutrient analysis. We are grateful to Alejandro Abdala, Julia Engelmann and Nina Dombrowsky for providing the functional annotation pipeline. This work was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator grant 865694: DiversiPHI (B.E.D), the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany\u2019s Excellence Strategy \u2013 EXC 2051 \u2013 Project-ID 39071386 (B.E.D), the European Union\u2019s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, under the Marie Sk\u0142odowska-Curie Actions Innovative Training Networks grant agreement no. 955974 (VIROINF, B.E.D), the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in the context of an Alexander von Humboldt-Professorship founded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (B.E.D), and a junior researcher fellowship from the Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (FWO) [12D8623N, C.L.].
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Koninklijk Nederlands Instituut voor Onderzoek der Zee | |
| Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek | |
| Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung | |
| Horizon 2020 Framework Programme | |
| British Antarctic Survey | |
| Gosse Metz for the Sterivex | |
| Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung | |
| European Research Council | 865694 |
| Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft | 39071386 |
| Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Innovative Training Networks | 955974 |
| Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek | 12D8623N |
