ReviewMicrobiology and molecular biology reviews : MMBR2010
Trade-offs between competition and defense specialists among unicellular planktonic organisms: the "killing the winner" hypothesis revisited.
Review in Microbiology and molecular biology reviews : MMBR, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 169 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
169 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 425 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Impact of Climate Change on Cyanobacteria-Cyanophage Interactions and Their Role in Cyanobacterial Blooms in Freshwater Lakes.Global change biology · 2026Article
- Host Range Breadth Correlates with Genic Diversity in Honeybee Phages.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Lytic viruses drive the decrease in polyphosphate-accumulating and phosphate-solubilizing potential of microbial communities with increasing reservoir age.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2026Article
- Top-down structuring of bacterial growth efficiency in a freshwater lake, France.World journal of microbiology & biotechnology · 2026Article
- Environmental disturbances and cyanobacterial traits shape prokaryotic dynamics in a eutrophic Mediterranean coastal lagoon.Environmental microbiome · 2026Article
- Sub-daily virus sampling at the Bermuda Atlantic Time Series reveals diel and depth-structured population dynamics without community-level shifts.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- From microbes to animals: a review on prey choice and prey-predator dynamics across organismal scales.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2026Review
- Beyond bacterial dysbiosis: the emerging role of gut bacteriophages in type 2 diabetes.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2026Review
- Biology of host-dependent restriction-modification in prokaryotes.EcoSal Plus · 2025Review
- Prolonged grazing reduces the diversity and weakens virus-host links of metagenome-assembled viral community in acidic karst soil.BMC biology · 2025Article
- Density Dependence Promotes Species Coexistence and Provides a Unifying Explanation for Distinct Productivity-Diversity Relationships.Ecology letters · 2025Article
- Phages Shape the Transformation of Organic Matter During Composting.Microbial biotechnology · 2025Article
- Article
- Comparative Analysis Reveals Host Species-Dependent Diversity Among 16 Virulent Bacteriophages Isolated Against SoybeanViruses · 2025Article
- Heterotrophic Prokaryote Host-Virus Dynamics During Spring in the Northeast Atlantic Ocean.Microorganisms · 2025Article
- Comparative Analysis Reveals Host Species-Dependent Diversity Among 16 Virulent Bacteriophages Isolated Against SoybeanbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Bacteria-phage (co)evolution is constrained in a synthetic community across multiple bacteria-phage pairs.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2025Article
109 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 4 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
A trade-off between strategies maximizing growth and minimizing losses appears to be a fundamental property of evolving biological entities existing in environments with limited resources. In the special case of unicellular planktonic organisms, the theoretical framework describing the trade-offs between competition and defense specialists is known as the "killing the winner" hypothesis (KtW). KtW describes how the availability of resources and the actions of predators (e.g., heterotrophic flagellates) and parasites (e.g., viruses) determine the composition and biogeochemical impact of such organisms. We extend KtW conceptually by introducing size- or shape-selective grazing of protozoans on prokaryotes into an idealized food web composed of prokaryotes, lytic viruses infecting prokaryotes, and protozoans. This results in a hierarchy analogous to a Russian doll, where KtW principles are at work on a lower level due to selective viral infection and on an upper level due to size- or shape-selective grazing by protozoans. Additionally, we critically discuss predictions and limitations of KtW in light of the recent literature, with particular focus on typically neglected aspects of KtW. Many aspects of KtW have been corroborated by in situ and experimental studies of isolates and natural communities. However, a thorough test of KtW is still hampered by current methodological limitations. In particular, the quantification of nutrient uptake rates of the competing prokaryotic populations and virus population-specific adsorption and decay rates appears to be the most daunting challenge for the years to come.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.