Towards trait-based modeling of aquatic viral ecology

Viruses are highly abundant in aquatic ecosystems and are expected to play important roles in top-down regulation of microbial prey, as well as in biogeochemical cycling via enhanced nutrient recycling (viral shunt) and enhanced export from surface waters (viral shuttle). Yet, evaluating such impacts within global biogeochemical models remains elusive. Here, we explore how trait-based modeling approaches used to represent phytoplankton dynamics can be adapted to studies of aquatic viral ecology. We present examples of fitting mechanistic ecological models to data as a means to estimate relevant viral life-history traits such as adsorption rates and burst sizes from population dynamics. Using this framework, and additional literature data, we identify allometric scaling principles that constrain estimates of viral-life history traits. We discuss some of the challenges in scaling up from bottles to ecosystems, including model-measurement mismatch, how environmental drivers may affect trait plasticity, and how we might expect different viral-host systems to impact biogeochemical cycling differently.

Presentation Preference: Poster

Primary Presenter: Stephen Beckett, University of Maryland (beckett@umd.edu)

Authors:

Stephen Beckett, University of Maryland  (beckett@umd.edu)

Daniel Muratore, Sante Fe Institute  (dmuratore@g.santafe.edu)

Paul Fremont, University of Maryland  (pfremont@umd.edu)

David Talmy, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville  (dtalmy@utk.edu)

Joshua Weitz, University of Maryland  (jsweitz@umd.edu)