“The population of Halteria, with nothing to eat but the virus, was growing an average of about 15 times larger over that same timespan.”
John DeLong dumped chloroviruses into pond water and watched them drop by as much as 100-fold in two days. The Halteria eating them grew about 15 times larger. DeLong estimates ciliates in a small pond eat 10 trillion viruses a day. Viruses were supposed to keep carbon stuck at the bottom of the food chain, and something down there is eating them.