Microbial ecology of El Tatio terrestrial hot springs: viromes
Geothermal systems harbor highly diverse and largely uncharacterized viral communities that play key roles in shaping microbial population dynamics and ecosystem functioning. This project aimed to characterize the diversity, host associations, transcriptional activity, and thermophilic adaptations of small dsDNA viruses inhabiting circumneutral thermophilic phototrophic microbial mats at El Tatio, the largest geyser field in the Southern Hemisphere. Ten viromic libraries were generated and integrated with metagenomic and metatranscriptomic datasets to recover over 2,000 viral operational taxonomic units (vOTUs). The viral community was predominantly novel, transcriptionally active, and dominated by Caudoviricetes bacteriophages.