Ocean Ecology: Viruses

Viruses are a microbe which is of particular interest to me. The most interesting part to me is our difficulty at classifying it. We can not even organize it into any known living being. It is not made of cells. It is able to show some reaction when meeting a cell. They are restricted in the criteria fulfilled by living creatures. They are simply a short genetic material chain which provides few genes. There is an outer capsid which is of protein. They are only able to reproduce when infecting a living cell. They are very tiny and hard to see. There are even retroviruses which have a single strand of RNA for their genetic information and are responsible for some of our more deadly diseases. They are beings which create the next generation by infecting a host.

They fulfil many niches in the marine environment and can interfere with other operations. They are essential to the marine environment and fulfil many roles though. Bacteriophages infect other bacteria and destroy them. They are very common in marine environments and have a role in the life cycle of the ocean. They are not living, but they are very abundant and they are very diverse. There are many in a single water sample. This is due to the microbial life, which there is many. Bacterial which they infect and destroy is prevalent in the ocean.

 They infect other microbes, including phytoplankton. They burst the phytoplankton and bacteria which helps produce the dissolved organic matter (DOM) which is taken in by other bacteria and microbes. Since they feed the zooplankton, they are key to providing food to animals of all shapes and sizes. The bursting of some microbes helps to create the essential nutrient release that is needed for other animals to eat. They infect marine animals with viruses, helping to keep some populations in check. They also may put some into detriment.

If these viruses disappeared from the environment, we would suffer in many ways. The animals would not have food, this is because the bottom of the food chain are the viruses which feed the microbes. The microbes feed the world by forming phytoplankton feeding zooplantkton and providing DOM, or dissolved organic matter to feed other microbes. There would be less viral disease, but bacteria would get out of control potentially if the viruses were not there to keep them in check.