Abstract: Summary The biological carbon pump, in which carbon fixed by photosynthesis is exported to the deep ocean through sinking, is a major process in Earth's carbon cycle. The proportion of primary production that is exported is termed the carbon export efficiency (CEE). Based on in-lab or regional scale observations, viruses were previously suggested to affect the CEE (i.e., viral “shunt” and “shuttle”). In this study, we tested associations between viral community composition and CEE measured at a global scale. A regression model based on ...
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