Tripathi Isha, Barber-Choi Naomi, Woodward Lauren, Falta Natalie, Shahwan Natalia, Yang Nickie, Knowles Ben
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
Institute for Quantitative and Computational Biosciences, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
Viruses. 2025 Apr 1;17(4):513. doi: 10.3390/v17040513.
Viral infection and lysis drive bacterial diversity and abundances, ultimately regulating global biogeochemical cycles. Infection can follow lytic or temperate routes, with lytic dynamics suppressing bacterial population growth and temperate infection enhancing it. Given that bacterial over-proliferation is a pervasive threat to ecosystems, determining which infection dynamic dominates a given ecosystem is a central question in viral ecology. However, the fields that describe and test the rules of viral infection-theoretical ecology and environmental microbiology, respectively-remain disconnected. To address this, we simulated common empirical approaches to analyze and distinguish between the predictions of three theoretical models mechanistically representing lytic to temperate infection dynamics. By doing so, we found that the models have remarkably similar predictions despite their mechanistic differences, as shown by PCA and correlation analyses. Essentially, the models are only discernable under simulated nutrient addition, where lytic models become less stable with no increase in host densities while the temperate model remains stable and has elevated host abundances. Highlighting this difference between the models, we present a dichotomous key illustrating how researchers can determine whether lytic or temperate infection dynamics dominate their ecosystem of interest using common metrics and empirical approaches.
病毒感染和裂解驱动细菌的多样性和丰度，最终调节全球生物地球化学循环。感染可通过裂解或温和途径进行，裂解动态抑制细菌种群增长，而温和感染则促进其增长。鉴于细菌过度增殖对生态系统构成普遍威胁，确定哪种感染动态在特定生态系统中占主导地位是病毒生态学的核心问题。然而，分别描述和测试病毒感染规则的领域——理论生态学和环境微生物学——仍然相互脱节。为了解决这个问题，我们模拟了常见的实证方法，以分析和区分三个理论模型的预测，这些模型从机制上代表了从裂解到温和感染的动态。通过这样做，我们发现尽管这些模型在机制上存在差异，但它们的预测却非常相似，主成分分析（PCA）和相关性分析表明了这一点。从本质上讲，这些模型只有在模拟添加营养物质的情况下才能区分，在这种情况下，裂解模型在宿主密度不增加的情况下变得不太稳定，而温和模型则保持稳定且宿主丰度升高。为突出这些模型之间的差异，我们提出了一个二分法关键，说明研究人员如何使用常见指标和实证方法来确定裂解或温和感染动态在其感兴趣的生态系统中占主导地位。
