Review of “Open Questions in the Social Lives of Viruses” for Journal of Evolutionary Biology
This review seems mainly to be intended for readers already well versed in sociovirology because the general overview of virus sociality seems cursory, which may be just as well since there have been some recent reviews of virus sociobiology e.g., Sanjuan 2021, Diaz Munoz 1017. The second half of the paper suggests numerous thought-provoking questions for further investigation.
My main critique of the manuscript is that I feel that many of the topics are only superficially discussed. I think there is value in digging a bit deeper into some of the examples to discuss the viruses that exhibit such behaviors. There are many, many examples of this in the manuscript, but, for one example, lines 185-188 discuss adaptive cheating. There is no mention of the mechanisms through which adaptive cheating can occur or even an example of it. The author could have, for example, discussed how Sendai virus DVGs promote virus persistence. Of course, this could be a deliberate choice by the author since very few actual viruses are mentioned in the manuscript. The latter half of the paper seems a bit more concrete than the first half. I confess I gave up suggesting that greater detail would be valuable after a point because my comments seemed to be getting repetitive.
L36-42: Listing some examples of each would make this pair of sentences more concrete for the reader. Otherwise, the reader is obliged to visit the referenced papers to understand what the author means
L65-67: Like the above comment, showing examples of some of these situations where new ideas were required would improve this passage.
L79: Virions often contain multiple genomes?
I find the first figure which I assume is associated with Box 1 to be utterly perplexing, but the box doesn’t contain any explanation of why the take and make arrows point the way they do.
L113-114: Are there any actual data on the relative rates of cheating other than simply repeating what was claimed in an earlier manuscript?
L115: Similarly, how is it possible to say that the most prolific kinds of cheats are DVGs?
L154-156: How does cheating drive the evolution of new forms of genome organization?
L247-249: These lines really need further explication. What viral production strategies? Attenuation? How does that reduce evolvability? How are they subsequently selected to increase evolvability?
L310: Allee effects could be explained. Perhaps include in the glossary.