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Ankita Kothari (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA) and colleagues published a paper in mSystems on how ecogenomics of groundwater phages suggests niche differentiation is linked to specific environmental tolerance. They analyzed groundwater plasmidomes and identified viral sequences, identified potential hosts, and linked sequences to a range of bacterial phyla. They also identified putative auxiliary metabolite genes for metal and antibiotic resistance, providing selective advantage to infected hosts.