We did note that for most sites and dates, the recruitment patterns in metatranscriptomes (presumably mRNA from viruses within the latent period) very generally reflected the metagenomic recruitment (presumably DNA in late infection and assembled viruses, when the highest amount of viral DNA is present in cells), with notable exceptions of POLA and SPOT in April and CAT in January, where the most transcriptionally active contigs had relatively low DNA as shown by recruitment in the metagenomes (Fig. 1). This evidence concerns the gene THEMIS and infection.