The pilus referred to in the above quote is a structure found in bacteria. Pili are somtimes employed in conjugation and, when that happens, a pilus is part of the male bacterial apparatus. A phage is a type of virus. So what the above quote says is that the male element in bacteria is virus-like with respect to both structure and function. And all higher forms of life are thought to have evolved from bacteria.
I should note in passing that the first edition of the work cited above tried to classify viruses by species. I wasn't able to check, while writing present material, whether or not that was done also in the second edition of that book. As has been mentioned already, a more recent text, by other authors, has dropped virus species classification altogether.
In the higher species of plants and animals, male and female members don't evolve independently. It�s true that pollen and sperm cells have an independent phase during which natural selection does act on them as independent entities. Some will be selected, others not. But the result of such selection must prove compatible with an ovum to ultimately survive the entire process of natural selection. Then the fertilized ovum, after incorporating a surviving male component, must itself survive.
Similarly one should think of a virus and its female moiety as evolving together as a species. The virus has its extra-cellular independent phase during which natural selection can occur. But any virus that survives that independent phase must still be able to interact, at some time afterward, with female elements that allow it to reproduce. Otherwise the evolution of that particular virus particle is finished.
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