| Comments |
"In eutrophic estuarine water, bacteria are found at a density of 10^6 cells/ml and viruses with a concentration of 10^7 particles/ml. These concentrations are estimates that vary with the seasons and the geographical location. In addition, these figures refer to physical and not viable entities...The production and distribution of marine phages are determined by the productivity and density of the host bacterial populations. This relationship is expressed by the virus-to-bacterium ratio that is frequently at 10 to 1." Note- ratio of virus/(Bacteria+archaea)˜15 according to Suttle, Marine viruses — major players in the global ecosystem, Nature Reviews Microbiology, 2007 PMID 17853907 p.802 left column "The abundance of viruses exceeds that of bacteria and archaea by approximately 15-fold. However, because of their extremely small size, viruses represent only approximately 5% of the prokaryotic biomass." See also Lepage et al., 2008 PMID 18268057 p.424 left column: "Bacteriophages outnumber bacteria by a factor of 10 in many natural ecosystems, exert a strong influence on bacterial diversity and population structure, and are probably involved in dysbiosis by destabilising bacterial communities [ref 1 therein]." |