Taken together, our results show that viruses don't just track host populations but actively respond to environmental conditions with degradation and restoration. Integrating viruses into restoration monitoring will strengthen our ability to assess and enhance peatland ecosystem recovery.

We then show that virus-host abundance trends across several host phyla change with ecosystem health. And, the proportion of temperate viruses increase in damaged soils, which have greater microbial growth rates than natural ones, suggesting piggyback-the-winner dynamics prevail in damaged peatlands

Protein clusters largely contained proteins encoded by viruses from soils of the same ecosystem health. And, specific protein families and auxiliary metabolic genes differed across natural, restored, and damaged soils, showing that viral protein functions are finely tuned to ecosystem health.

Differential abundance analysis across ecosystem health showed more damaged-enriched viruses than restored or natural. And, viral trends often diverged from their hosts, especially for certain C and S cyclers, showing that viral responses to degradation and restoration don't just mirror host shifts.

Most viral species appeared at multiple sites, but 54% were endemic to a single ecosystem health status (natural, damaged, or restored). Many genomes also clustered with viruses from other soil databases, suggesting a shared soil viral "backbone" plus strong local adaptation to ecosystem health.

There were several interesting findings! First, PCoA of viral communities showed geography as the main driver of community composition. But ecosystem health also significantly shaped peatland viral communities across the UK.

This past year, my dad was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. On October 5th, our family will walk together as Team Kosmo at Moving Day Chicago to celebrate his strength and support everyone living with Parkinson's.

Ok, now this is just ridiculous

A little late, but I had a wonderful time at the 5th IBSE international symposium at IIT Madras. Thank you to @karthik-a.bsky.social and Karthik Raman for organizing a conference with an excellent collection of speakers and students.

It might be tiny, but it’s an RNA pellet! Finally worked after weeks of troubleshooting.

Highlight of my week: getting some juicy virion pellets 😁🦠

Time point 1 of our long term sampling of Cherokee Marsh is a wrap! Big thanks to Xing Huang, @karthik-a.bsky.social and Etan Dieppa Colon (behind the 📷) for helping me kick off this chapter of my PhD.