Virivorous

It is thus tempting to believe that virivorous organisms, like bacterivorous ones, should be able to optimize their food uptake by exploiting patches of high prey abundances.

The salt-forced extinction of potential virivorous nanoflagellates is a possible explanation, but the ability of these viruses to better resist ambient UV radiations is not unrealistic either.

Finally, the higher increase of VA in comparison to HBA in hypersaline systems was probably related to a higher resistance of halophages to environmental virucidal agents and, to a lesser extent, due to a lack of virivorous nanoflagellates or ciliates.

If the researchers could prove that the microbes were growing by eating chlorovirus, they would have compelling evidence that these protists can sustain themselves with a virivorous lifestyle.