What Does Yaravirus Discovery Mean for Evolution?

[pinball1970]

TL;DR

https://www.livescience.com/new-ameoba-virus-discovered.html

Preprint here

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.28.923185v1

Name Yaravirus found in an artificial lake with 90% novel genes.

Evolution significance?

 

[jim mcnamara]

Two anecdotal comments:

A PBS NOVA episode about the diversity of life in a half acre field mentioned that a teaspoon of soil contained thousands of species of protozoans, fungi, bacteria, archaea, and viruses.

The mass of microbiota in your gut is usually taken to be ~1Kg - (2.2lbs), and is made up of a huge variety of organisms and company. Literally trillions of "individuals". So, in a sense, the largest number of cells in an organ could be taken as your friendly local gut flora.

@pinball1970 - finding a novel virus is helpful especially in developing genetic databases.
We are still in the alpha phase of Biology - finding and describing new species.