An Organism That Can Dine Exclusively on Viruses Has Been Found in a World First

Researchers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln have found that a type of freshwater plankton is thriving on a diet of viruses.

Viruses can be eaten by many organisms, and may even season the diet of some marine protists. To be considered a true step in the food chain, viruses need to give a significant amount of energy to their consumers.

The Halteria is a protist that propels it through the water. Laboratory samples of the ciliate consumed chloroviruses added to its environment, which in turn fueled Halteria's growth.

The carbon cycle could be affected by widespread consumption of chloroviruses in the wild. chloroviruses are known to cause their hosts to burst apart, releasing carbon and other nutrients into the environment, which could limit the amount of virus-eating.

The amount of energy movement up the food chain is the result of a crude estimate of how many viruses there are, how many ciliates there are and how much water there is.

It should change our view on global carbon cycling if this is happening at the scale that we think it is.

There weren't many previous studies that the scientists could turn to for reference, and the research was based on the idea that the number of Viruses and Micro organisms in the water could lead to cannibalism.

If you're an organisms looking to feed, you'll find some good stuff inside the Viruses. The researchers believed that something would want to eat that.

The chloroviruses were added to the pond water to see if any species treated them as food. They went to Halteria and Paramecium because of that.

The sizes and numbers of the Paramecium didn't change. The chloro virus was used as a source of nutrition by Halteria. The ciliate's population grew by 15 times in two days.

It was suggested that there were more Halteria organisms. They were large enough that I could grab some with a pipette tip and count them.

The two types of plankton were tagged with fluorescent green dye. The vacuoles were glowing green from the feeding of the Viruses.

The team was given more evidence of what was happening by the growth of Halteria in comparison to the decline of the chloroviruses.

There's still more to discover here. The researchers want to look at how virovores might affect the food web and the evolution of species. They need to get evidence of it in the wild.

I was motivated to determine whether or not this was weird or not. This isn't strange. Nobody noticed it.

We have to see if this is true in nature.

The research was published in a journal.