Abstract
Although a strong link between viruses and prokaryotes is commonly known to exist in aquatic systems, few studies have investigated their relationship in spring waters. In the French Massif Central, certain springs are known to exhibit varying levels of naturally occurring radioactivity. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine the standing stock of viruses together with prokaryotes and determine the potential environmental factors influencing them in springs characterized by contrasted radioactivity gradient. Among the investigated 15 spring habitats, flow cytometry analyses indicated that both viral (VA) and prokaryotic abundances (PA) varied by an order of magnitude accompanied by virus-to-prokaryote ratio ranging between 8 and 144.2. Significant differences in VA was evident among springs where low abundances (mean ± SD: 21.3 ± 7.0 × 107 VLP l−1) corresponded to high (mean ± SD: 1911 ± 814.0 nGy h−1) gamma (γ) dose radiation (222Rn) and vice versa. Adverse effect of water radioactivity (222Rn) on VA could perhaps corroborate our hypothesis of drastic effect of ionizing radiations on viruses, which might explain for lack of significant relationship between PA and VA. In such a scenario of prevailing low VA, the adopted phage life strategies could define their existence in these specialized ecosystems.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge technical support from the Zone Atelier Territoires Uranifères and from the Cytometry, Sort & Transmission Electronic Microscopy (CYSTEM) located on the campus of the University of Clermont Auvergne. We also acknowledge the three anonymous reviewers for their inputs and suggestions which greatly improved the quality of the manuscript.
Funding
This study was funded by a grant from CNRS through the 80|Prime program (project acronym: DISCOVER) including a CNRS doctoral grant for L.A. BAKER. We acknowledge financial support from CNRS-INEE within the context of the Zone Atelier Territoires Uranifères.
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Conceptualization, BDG and PRAS; methodology, PRAS, BA, AE, VO, CJ, KS, CP, BV, KD, MG, and MH; formal analysis, BL-A with the inputs from the other authors.; data curation, BL-A; writing—original draft preparation, BL-A; writing—review and editing, BL-A, PRAS, and S-NT with the inputs from the other authors; supervision, BDG, PRAS, and BA; project administration, BDG and PRAS; funding acquisition, BA and BDG. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
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Baker, LA., Biron, D.G., Beauger, A. et al. Virus-to-prokaryote ratio in spring waters along a gradient of natural radioactivity. Hydrobiologia 850, 1109–1121 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-023-05146-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-023-05146-1