Viral Ecology of Marine Systems
A quarter teaspoon of seawater contains on the order of a million cells and ten million viruses. Despite their microscopic size and relative isolation, marine microbes catalyze chemical reactions that are critical for maintaining Earth’s habitability. Virus infections of marine microbes can transform the fate of individual cells and also cascade up to influence population dynamics, community diversity, and even the recycling and export of carbon and other essential nutrients. We are working on several projects to understand how virus-microbe interactions shape the biogeochemical cycles of one of the largest habitats on Earth.
- Assessing top-down control of marine microbes by viruses
- Linking abiotic factors to virus-microbe dynamics in a changing climate
- Exploring the influence of non-lytic interactions on virus-microbe dynamics
Recent Publications
- Complex marine microbial communities partition metabolism of scarce resources over the diel cycle
- Cyanophages from a less virulent clade dominate over their sister clade in global oceans
- Combined pigment and metatranscriptomic analysis reveals highly synchronized diel patterns of phenotypic light response across domains in the open oligotrophic ocean
Team members
