If observed proportions of certain character state changes in viruses were applied to megafauna, hypotheses regarding the amount of time required to manufacture these changes would most likely be on the order of hundreds of thousands to millions of years. Unlike the cellular “macrobiota,” however, our observations of viral transformation are very direct and never from examination of a large-scale past timeline such as the fossil record. Virus taxa, like organisms more frequently investigated evolutionarily, clearly change through time and to profound degrees. While viruses are not metabolically active organisms, their phenotypic variation results in differential replication success, thereby ensuring they are subject to the laws of evolution. Viruses are obligate molecular parasites that rely on only one type of genomic material (either DNA or RNA) and use a proteinaceous genome package to facilitate dispersal. There are characteristics shared by all viruses that set them apart from other self-replicating systems. I. INTRODUCTION: DEFINING VIRAL EVOLUTIONARY ECOLOGYĭistinguishing viruses, whether exogenous or endogenous, from other forms of life including parasitic genetic elements is an ambiguous but not impossible task.
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