Figure 2.

Coevolutionary diversification of bacteria and phage strains with the relaxed lock-and-key model. Plot shows phage–bacteria community composition over time for a simulation run initialized with a single host strain and perfectly matched phage (initial genotypes h = v = 0.2). Genotypes with non-zero density for bacteria, phage or both bacteria and phage are highlighted. The fastest growing bacteria genotype is located at h = 0.5. The cross-section of the community at time t = 3.5 × 10⁷ is examined in figure 3. Horizontal dotted lines indicate time points for which interaction matrices are presented in figures 4 and 5.