Fig. 3. A minimal model for phage-plasmid hybrid reproduces the observed eco-evolutionary dynamics.

a Schematic illustration of the model simulation. A question mark is drawn under a host cell when it carries more than one copies of phage-plasmids with different genotypes (a heterozygote). In those cases, the phage-plasmid genotype in descendants becomes stochastic due to segregational drift (e.g., cells 9, 10, 11, and 12). b With reinfection and segregational drift as the only two components, the simulated eco-evolutionary dynamics well matches the observed patterns in the experiment. For the experimentally observed eco-evolutionary dynamics, see Fig. 1a and Fig. S4. See Methods for full details of the model simulation. Source data of Fig. 3 are provided in the Source Data file.