Marine archaea and archaeal viruses under global change

Abstract

Global change is altering oceanic temperature, salinity, pH, and oxygen concentration, directly and indirectly influencing marine microbial food web structure and function. As microbes represent >90% of the ocean's biomass and are major drivers of biogeochemical cycles, understanding their responses to such changes is fundamental for predicting the consequences of global change on ecosystem functioning. Recent findings indicate that marine archaea and archaeal viruses are active and relevant components of marine microbial assemblages, far more abundant and diverse than was previously thought. Further research is urgently needed to better understand the impacts of global change on virus-archaea dynamics and how archaea and their viruses can interactively influence the ocean's feedbacks on global change.

Keywords: Marine archaea; Thaumarchaeota; archaeal viruses.

Figure 1.. Number of publications regarding archaea, subdivided into publications on marine or non-marine archaea (left chart) and publications on archaea or on viruses of archaea (right chart), as searched through the Web of Science database.

The following keywords were used in the searches for archaea: archaea or archaebacteria or archaeobacteria. The following keywords were used in the searches for marine archaea: marine archaea or ocean archaea or sea archaea, also using the terms archaebacteria or archaeobacteria. The following keywords were used in the searches for viruses of archaea: archaea virus or archaebacteria virus or archaeobacteria virus. Research on archaea has increased over the past few decades, but relatively little focus has been directed towards marine archaea and archaeal viruses, despite the current compelling evidence of their relevant role at the global level.