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Giant viruses discovered on Greenland ice sheet could reduce ice melt by feeding on the snow algae which diminish ability of ice to reflect the sun
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Why do they keep using the expression "the viruses feed on..."? Viruses don't "feed" on anything, to my knowledge. If the author is trying to analogize the subject for ease of comprehension, they should really do so in a way that's, you know, actually analogous to what they're writing about.
I guess they are basically killing the algae rather than letting them bloom?
I think Promonk's main point is that viruses don't work like heterotrophic organisms - they don't generally tend to eat something and harvest the chemicals for energy. Instead, they infect a host and hijack the biological machinery to replicate more virus, which usually ends in the death of the host. So yes, the virus is controlling the population of the algae by killing them, and Promonk is accurately pointing out that the mechanism mentioned in the popular press article probably isn't right.
While I agree with you that it's not accurately describing the picture given what we know about viruses, I don't think it's too much a misstep. Yes, viruses don't typically consume other organisms for energy, but I think it might be a little more intuitive for many people to think of this ecological relationship as "predator-prey".
Of course, I'm sure the authors of the paper saw those comments about feeding and screamed silently.