David Needham

counterargument, viruses in the < 0.2 um size fraction aren't doing anything

Happy New Year! 🎉 Check out our recent paper describing a seawater microvolume approach for generating amplicon & metagenome data 🧬, enabling high-throughput workflows 🚀. Amplicon results closely match traditional filtration-based methods, & we recover high-quality prokaryotic & viral genomes.👇

Matthias Wietz (@matthiaswietz.bsky.social) marine biologist & polar researcher | music, scuba diving & SciComm | sounds: https://spti.fi/16bmvbl & http://instagr.am/the.arcwatchers

Special shoutout to first author Alyzza Calayag (not yet on Bluesky)! This was a strong collaboration between @geomarkiel.bsky.social and @awi.de especially @taylorpriest.bsky.social and @matthiaswietz.bsky.social — and others not on bluesky

We also, surprisingly, found that the viruses are detected in the southern ocean (‘bi-polarity’) as well as indications of cold-adaptation, indicating that these observations may also be relevant there, but remain to be further explored.

Viruses in Polar Oceans follow Rhythms of the Sea 31 July 2025 / Kiel. Viruses in the cold waters of the Arctic are strongly seasonal and are also detected in the Antarctic. This surprising discovery comes from a multi-year time-series study led by t...

But we also found striking increases in virus-to-microbe ratios in late summer — suggesting that if you want to understand the impacts of viruses in the strongly seasonal Arctic, it’s very important when you are there.

Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Press: www.geomar.de/en/news/arti...

We tracked viral communities across seasons — and found strong seasonal patterns and striking late-summer shifts in virus–host dynamics.

Yes, there’s seasonality in Arctic virus community composition…

🚨 In case you missed it… our 4-year time-series analysis of Arctic Ocean viruses is out now!

Near-monthly samples — including through the dark, cold, polar winter ❄️ — using long-read metagenomics.

Short thread 🧵👇

More realistic plankton simulation models will improve projections of ocean ecosystem responses to global change - Nature Ecology & Evolution Plankton models have crucial applications in ecosystem management and climate change projections. This Perspective suggests that stronger alignment of plankton models with empirical knowledge is neede...

Our new perspective paper just out @natecoevo.nature.com Led by Kevin J. Flynn and based on a community effort.

More realistic #plankton simulation models will improve projections of #ocean #ecosystem responses to global change. @ueaenv.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

With a little help from my friends: importance of protist-protist interactions in structuring marine protistan communities in the San Pedro Channel #usc_meb #ResearchAtUSC journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.... #jcampubs 🌊