Kill the Winner hypothesis
The "Kill the Winner" hypothesis 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 prokaryotes, is to concentrate on the "winner", the most active population. This tends to moderate the relative populations of the prokaryotes, rather than the "winner take all". The model is related to the Lotka–Volterra equations.
