Question

Viruses are found in high concentrations in many marine environments. Suggest two roles that virus may play in the microbial ecology of pelagic ocean regions?

Answer 1

Viruses do play a major role in microbial ecology of pelagic ocean region some of the examples of the virus includes Baculoviridae, Herpesviridae, Myoviridae, Phycodnaviridae, Picornaviridae, Podoviridae, Retroviridae,

The major roles two roles incled

• The term viral “short-circuit” in marine food webs. Viruses divert the flow of carbon and nutrients from secondary consumers (black arrows) by destroying host cells and releasing the contents of these cells into the pool of dissolved organic matter (DOM) in the ocean (gray arrows).
• The second role is that they kill many of the algae blooms. Viruses are the main agents responsible for the rapid destruction of harmful algal blooms, which often kill other marine life. The number of viruses in the oceans decreases further offshore and deeper into the water.This helps in survival of many bacterial organisms

So these are the major two roles that virus play in the microbial ecology of pelagic ocean regions.

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