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Viruses are the most diverse and abundant “forms of life” on Earth. They significantly impact human health and are integral to the functioning of aquatic ecosystems, steering the cycle of microbiotic communities. Developing an understanding of virus impacts on aquatic systems requires general knowledge of the basic life history features which govern their persistence (i.e., survival, growth and reproduction). We examine the effect of temperature on virus mortality (i.e., decay) rate across a diverse range of environments for all major virus types (dsDNA, ssDNA, etc.). Temperature is a proven determinant of virus decay rate, establishing a general relationship between temperature and virus decay rate provides a basis for examining the importance of other factors that may play a role in decay. We find that across all species, virus survival decreases about 2-fold for every 10 degree increase in temperature and explains about 67% of the variation. There are three hypothesis for the temperature-decay relationship: decay rate is proportional to DNA decay, decay rate is proportional to virus multiplication rate or that it is proportional to host decay rate (1/lifespan). In this broad-scale analysis, the viral decay trend across temperatures is established and the possible mechanistic processes responsible for the observed pattern are compared. The slope of the observed temperature-lifespan virus relationship (-.084 ln(Days)/˚C) was significantly shallower than that of DNA decay (-0.19 ln(DNA Half-life, 100bp/˚C), but very similar to that of host cell lifespan (-0.091 ln(body-mass corrected lifespan of host cells/˚C). This suggests that DNA decay may be an unlikely explanation for the observed pattern but the pattern could result from co-evolutionary processes pairing viral decay rate with that of their host’s. |
