If these organisms are eating viruses in nature, it could change the way scientists think about global carbon cycling.
Are viruses the new gourmet meal du jour? Maybe for the tiny, single-celled organisms that live in freshwater bodies around the world.
The viruses in question belong to the genus Chlorovirus genus and are found in essentially every body of freshwater, but mostly in inland water such as lakes and ponds. Chloroviruses infect algae, stuffing the algae full of viruses until they explode. This explosion releases carbon and other nutrients into the environment that would have otherwise been eaten by the algae's predators; instead, these nutrients are made available to other microorganisms.
"That's really just keeping carbon down in this sort of microbial soup layer, keeping grazers from taking energy up the food chain," DeLong said.
Luckily, samples for his study weren't hard to find. DeLong drove to a nearby pond and took some pond water back to the lab. He concentrated as many microorganisms as he could into drops of water and added a generous helping of Chlorovirus to some of them.
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