57-biocrust mbio paper

Biocrusts are photosynthetic hotspots in deserts that face an uncertain future due to climate change-induced changes in rainfall. Marc Van Goethem (Lawrence Berkeley National Labs) and colleagues have published a study in mBio characterizing phage-host dynamics in response to biocrust wetting. Their results suggest that phages control populations of spore-forming bacteria in biocrusts, and that phages may influence and even benefit from host sporulation dynamics.