A quarter teaspoon of seawater contains on the order of a million cells and ten million viruses. Despite their microscopic size and relative isolation, marine microbes catalyze chemical reactions that are critical for maintaining Earth’s habitability. Virus infections of marine microbes can transform the fate of individual cells and also cascade up to influence population dynamics, community diversity, and even the recycling and export of carbon and other essential nutrients. We are working on several projects to understand how virus-microbe interactions shape the biogeochemical cycles of one of the largest habitats on Earth.

• Assessing top-down control of marine microbes by viruses
• Linking abiotic factors to virus-microbe dynamics in a changing climate
• Exploring the influence of non-lytic interactions on virus-microbe dynamics

Recent Publications

• Disentangling top-down drivers of mortality underlying diel population dynamics of Prochlorococcus in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre
• Microbial and Viral Genome and Proteome Nitrogen Demand Varies Across Multiple Spatial Scales Within a Marine Oxygen Minimum Zone
• Cyanophages from a less virulent clade dominate over their sister clade in global oceans

Team members