Fig. 3

Viral activity levels by depth and lake. a Taxonomic annotation of viral genomes and genome fragments across three sampling depths and lakes. The relative abundances of viral genomes were averaged across biological replicates. b Hierarchical clustering of viral genomes by layer and lake. In blue, viral activity is shown in log₁₀(x + 1) transformed reads per kilobase million (rpkm). The upper color bar indicates the lake depth, where Mixo. = mixolimnion, Plate = microbial plate, and Moni. = monimolimnion. The second color bar indicates the lake, abbreviated as MAH = Mahoney Lake, POI = Poison Lake, and LIMB = Lime Blue Lake. The dendrogram is based on hierarchical clustering of log₁₀(x + 1) rpkm values. c Number of active viruses based on transcriptional activity in each lake across layers. Significant differences from Tukey’s HSD test are displayed with stars, where * indicates p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, and ***p < 0.001