ArticleNature microbiology2016
Re-examination of the relationship between marine virus and microbial cell abundances.
Article in Nature microbiology, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 161 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
161 citing papers in PubMed.
- Stable coexistence and transport of lytic phage infections with migrating bacterial hosts.Science advances · 2026Article
- Small viruses reveal bidirectional evolution between HK97-fold viruses and encapsulins via procapsids.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Bacteriophages and polymeric delivery systems: a mapping review.Folia microbiologica · 2026Review
- Temporal, Spatial, and Environmental Variation in Virus-like Particle Abundance in the Northwestern Arabian Gulf.Viruses · 2026Article
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- Hi-C Links Reveal Viral Activity and Infection Within the Free-Living Microbial Community of a Secondary Chlorophyll Maximum in the Eastern Tropical North Pacific.Environmental microbiology · 2026Article
- Coexistence of Photosynthetic Marine Microorganisms, Viruses and Grazers: Towards Integration in Ocean Ecosystem Models.Environmental microbiology · 2026Article
- Mapping of the viral shunt across widespread coccolithophore blooms using metabolic biomarkers.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- The adaptive plasticity of temperate phageVirus evolution · 2026Article
- Virus-encoded metabolism may support environmental stress adaptation of microbial hosts in an estuarine hypoxic zone.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Heterotrophic Prokaryote Host-Virus Dynamics During Spring in the Northeast Atlantic Ocean.Microorganisms · 2025Article
- Phages use contingency loci as a bet-hedging strategy.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Article
- Fluid flow generates bacterial conjugation hot spots by increasing the rate of shear-driven cell-cell encounters.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Organic particle scavenging by marine bacteria: influences of bacterial nanoscale surface properties.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- Article
- Gut phages and their interactions with bacterial and mammalian hosts.Journal of bacteriology · 2025Review
- Slower swimming promotes chemotactic encounters between bacteria and small phytoplankton.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Ecological strategies of bacteria shape inherent phage diversity in Atlantic salmon gut microbiomes.The ISME journal · 2025Article
101 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
14 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Marine viruses are critical drivers of ocean biogeochemistry, and their abundances vary spatiotemporally in the global oceans, with upper estimates exceeding 10(8) per ml. Over many years, a consensus has emerged that virus abundances are typically tenfold higher than microbial cell abundances. However, the true explanatory power of a linear relationship and its robustness across diverse ocean environments is unclear. Here, we compile 5,671 microbial cell and virus abundance estimates from 25 distinct marine surveys and find substantial variation in the virus-to-microbial cell ratio, in which a 10:1 model has either limited or no explanatory power. Instead, virus abundances are better described as nonlinear, power-law functions of microbial cell abundances. The fitted scaling exponents are typically less than 1, implying that the virus-to-microbial cell ratio decreases with microbial cell density, rather than remaining fixed. The observed scaling also implies that viral effect sizes derived from 'representative' abundances require substantial refinement to be extrapolated to regional or global scales.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.