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Microbial oceanography

Killers of the winners

Nature volume 494, pages 320–321 (2013)Cite this article

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Viruses that infect the SAR11 group of oceanic bacteria have finally been found and sequenced. Because SAR11 is ubiquitous, these viruses may be the most abundant in the oceans — and perhaps in the entire biosphere. See Letter p.357

The general importance of bacteria in marine ecosystems was recognized long before the discovery of SAR11. Bacteria were known to be the most abundant organisms in the oceans — numbering nearly 109 per litre of surface sea water — and to be mediators of many biogeochemical processes in the cycling of carbon and other elements. However, until about 1990, microbiologists had identified only a few marine bacterial species because most could not be isolated and cultivated in the lab using the methods available at the time.

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Figure 1: Ocean inhabitants.

JED FUHRMAN

Notes

  1. *This article and the paper under discussion3 were published online on 13 February 2013.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. David L. Kirchman is in the School of Marine Science and Policy, University of Delaware, Lewes, Delaware 19958, USA.,

    David L. Kirchman

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  1. David L. Kirchman
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Correspondence to David L. Kirchman.

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Kirchman, D. Killers of the winners. Nature 494, 320–321 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11951

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