. “But then they were big enough that I could actually grab some with a pipette tip, put them in a clean drop, and be able to count them.”had no other source of food other than the virus, and its population was growing 15 times larger, while the chlorovirus population wasn’t expanding at all.was eating the virus. The ciliate equivalent of a stomach called the vacuole, was soon glowing green..
“Everything should want to eat them. So many things will eat anything they can get ahold of. Surely something would have learned how to eat these really good raw materials.” The next steps for the team will happen once winter ends in the Midwest. They plan to go back to the pond to see if virovory is occurring in the wild, not just a lab setting.Laura is a science news writer, covering a wide variety of subjects, but she is particularly fascinated by all things aquatic, paleontology, nanotechnology, and exploring how science influences daily life.