Figure 3.

Competition-colonization trade-off in a two-virus system. (A) The scheme represents a two virus competition (blue, competitor; green, colonizer). Virulence, a_i, is defined as cell killing rate. Competitiveness, c, is the proportion of each virus produced in a coinfected cell. (B) The plot illustrates the model prediction of a density-dependent outcome of the coevolutionary dynamics of a colonizer and a competitor in cell culture. Shown is the critical intracellular competitveness, c, defined as the fraction of colonizer offspring that a coinfected cell will produce, as a function of the ratio of the colonizer virulence to the competitor virulence, a, for different initial viral densities. For any given initial viral density, colonizers are predicted to win the competition if the viral phenotypes (a, c) fall below the respective curve. Otherwise, competitors are predicted to outcompete colonizers. For further details see reference 4.