Do phages impact microbial dynamics, prokaryotic community structure and nutrient dynamics in Lake Bourget?

Phages are the most abundant and diversified biological entities in aquatic ecosystems. Understanding their functional role requires laboratory experiments on a short time-scale. Using samples of surface waters of Lake Bourget, we studied whether viruses impact (i) the abundance patterns of the bacterial and phytoplankton communities, (ii) a part of the prokaryotic community composition (both for Eubacteria and Archaea), and (iii) the recycling of nutrients and/or organic matter. Three experiments were performed (one each in February, March and April) at the transition between winter and spring in 2013. The experiment reduced or increased the abundance of virus-like particles in samples containing only the picoplanktonic fraction. Viral and cellular abundances, bacterial and archaeal community structures as well as nutrient concentrations were analysed every 24 h for 3 days. Some of the results reveal that increasing the phage abundance increased the diversity of the eubacterial community. Consistent with the ‘killing the winner’ concept, viruses are thus likely to significantly change the composition of the bacterial community. This suggests a positive association between viral abundance and bacterial diversity. In contrast, the composition of the archaeal community did not seem to be affected by phage abundance, suggesting the absence of viral control on this community or the inability to observe it at this period of year, either based on the time scale of the investigation or because the archaeal virus titre was too low to induce a significant and visible effect. Lastly, we were unable to demonstrate viruses driving the cycling of nutrients or the response of plankton to nutrient concentration changes in a significant way, suggesting that the role of viruses may be subtle or difficult to assess through the use of such experimental procedures.