Biogeochemical models for predicting carbon dynamics increasingly include microbial processes, reflecting the importance of microorganisms in regulating the movement of carbon between soils and the atmosphere. Soil viruses can redirect carbon among various chemical pools, indicating a need for quantification and development soil carbon models that explicitly represent viral dynamics. In this opinion, we derive a global estimate of carbon potentially released from microbial biomass by viral infections in soils and synthesize a quantitative soil carbon budget from existing literature that explicitly includes viral impacts. We then adapt known mechanisms by which viruses influence carbon cycles in marine ecosystems into a soil‐explicit framework. Finally, we explore the diversity of virus–host interactions during infection and conceptualize how infection mode may impact soil carbon fate. Our synthesis highlights key knowledge gaps hindering the incorporation of viruses into soil carbon cycling research and generates specific hypotheses to test in the pursuit of better quantifying microbial dynamics that explain ecosystem‐scale carbon fluxes. The importance of identifying critical drivers behind soil carbon dynamics, including these elusive but likely pervasive viral mechanisms of carbon redistribution, becomes more pressing with climate change.

中文翻译：

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估计病毒对土壤碳动力学贡献的重要性


用于预测碳动力学的生物地球化学模型越来越多地包括微生物过程，这反映了微生物在调节碳在土壤和大气之间移动方面的重要性。土壤病毒可以在各种化学库之间重定向碳，这表明需要量化和开发明确代表病毒动力学的土壤碳模型。在这份意见中，我们得出了土壤中病毒感染可能从微生物生物量中释放的碳的全球估计值，并从明确包括病毒影响的现有文献中综合了一个定量土壤碳收支。然后，我们将病毒影响海洋生态系统碳循环的已知机制调整为土壤明确的框架。最后，我们探讨了感染过程中病毒-宿主相互作用的多样性，并概念化了感染模式如何影响土壤碳命运。我们的综合强调了阻碍将病毒纳入土壤碳循环研究的关键知识差距，并产生了具体的假设进行测试，以寻求更好地量化解释生态系统规模碳通量的微生物动力学。随着气候变化，确定土壤碳动力学背后的关键驱动因素的重要性，包括这些难以捉摸但可能普遍存在的碳再分配病毒机制，变得更加紧迫。