Kill the Winner hypothesis

The "Kill the Winner" hypothesis" or KTW is a model of population growth involving prokaryotes, viruses and protozoans. It is based on the concept of prokaryotes taking one of two reactions to limited resources: "competition", that is, that priority directed to growth of the population, or a "winner"; and "defense", where the resources are directed to survival against attacks. It is then assumed that the better strategy for a phage, or virus which attacks prokaryote, to concentrate on the "winner", the most active population (possibly the most abundant). This tends to moderate the relative populations of the prokaryotes, rather than the "winner take all". The model is related to the Lotka Volterra equation.

References

• Christian Winter, Tierry Bouvier, Markus G. Weinbauer, T. Frede Thingstad (2010). "Trade-Offs between Competition and Defense Specialists among Unicellular Organisms: The "Killing the Winner" Hypothesis Revisted". Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews. 74 (1): 42–57. doi:10.1128/MMBR.00034-09. CS1 maint: Uses authors parameter (link)
• Sergei Maslov, Kim Sneppen (2017). "Population cycles and species diversity in dynamic Kill-the-Winner model of microbial ecosystems". Scientific Reports. 7. doi:10.1038/srepp39642. CS1 maint: Uses authors parameter (link)
• T. Frede Thingstad (2000). "Elements of a theory for the mechanisms controlling abundance, diversity, and biogeochemical role of lytic bacterial viruses in aquatic systems". Limnology Oceanology. 45 (6): 1320–1328.