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like_a_deaf_elephant t1_izezwkc wrote

Reply to comment by AdEnvironmental8339 in Are there a lot more diseases for land animals than sea creatures? If yes, why? by Bored_Survivor

It's completely believable which is one of those alarms that makes me want a citation.

Edit: I'll do the homework.

1 - "A teaspoon of seawater typically contains about fifty million viruses." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_viruses - Suttle, C. (2005). "Viruses in the sea". Nature

2 - "10 million viruses in a drop of seawater" - https://www.futurity.org/millions-of-marine-viruses-ebb-and-flow/

So it's the low-end estimate and probably accurate enough for trivia and Internet gossip.

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vibriojoey t1_izfenzx wrote

Its been almost a decade since I did undergrad research in marine microbiology so I was definitely trying to be conservative with that estimate :P but I am sure the numbers will vary based on polution, salinity, temperature, current flow and so on.

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like_a_deaf_elephant t1_izfngv2 wrote

Ah no doubt. It's just one of those believable claims that somehow just needs more, y'know? Nothing personal, I assure you.

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FaustGrenaldo t1_izibeli wrote

Just curious as to how a teaspoon of seawater can ' contain' so many viruses. I thought that all viruses need a host to survive? Surely, they're not just floating around in water, right?

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like_a_deaf_elephant t1_izich5a wrote

Well I'm a layman here, but there's the whole debate if viruses are even alive. I'm sure this generalisation is very wrong, but most viruses are fatty capsules of genetic material at the end of the day. They don't really need a host to survive - just to proliferate.

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oily_fish t1_izirodj wrote

They float around until they bump into a host. The majority of those viruses probably infect bacteria

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