Reminds me of how the discovery of giant viruses - like truly huge viral particles - was immediately also followed by discovering "virophages" which parasitized them.

Which of course makes sense to some degree: if an adaptive strategy is successful enough, then parasitizing something which successfully implements it is going to be resource favorable (and likely, presumably by being a member of that species and just shedding components you don't need if you take them).

Indeed. Well deduced.

Inevitability of Genetic Parasites Open Access Jaime Iranzo, Pere Puigbò, Alexander E. Lobkovsky, Yuri I. Wolf, Eugene V. Koonin https://academic.oup.com/gbe/article/8/9/2856/2236450

Unsurprisingly maybe, DPANN archaea can also host viruses: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-025-02149-7 (Paywalled, but there’s a preprint at https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.15.638363v1)