FIG. 2.
Schematic of the mechanisms underlying the “killing the winner” hypothesis, also incorporating size- or shape-selective grazing by protozoa. There are potentially m different edible and q different inedible prokaryotic types that are infected by as many different virus types. The populations Bn and Ip do not grow fast enough to sustain stable virus populations Vn and Wp (indicated by excluding part of the rectangles referring to the population sizes of Bn and Ip). Thus, population Bn is only subject to mortality due to grazing, and Ip is controlled solely by resource limitation. Populations not able to establish stably in the system are indicated by dashed lines. The meanings of the symbols are given in Table 1.