title: Power law rank-abundance models for marine phage communities.
abstract: Metagenomic analyses suggest that the rank-abundance curve for marine phage communities follows a power law distribution. A new type of power law dependence based on a simple model in which a modified version of Lotka-Volterra predator-prey dynamics is sampled uniformly in time is presented. Biologically, the model embodies a kill the winner hypothesis and a neutral evolution hypothesis. The model can match observed power law distributions and uses very few parameters that are readily identifiable and characterize phage ecosystems. The model makes new untested predictions: (1) it is unlikely that the most abundant phage genotype will be the same at different time points and (2) the long-term decay of isolated phage populations follows a power law.
authors.affiliation: Physics Institute, Technical University of Chemnitz, Chemnitz, Germany.
authors.forename: Karl Heinz
authors.initials: KH
authors.lastname: Hoffmann
authors.forename: Beltran
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Rodriguez-Brito
authors.forename: Mya
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Breitbart
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Bangor
authors.forename: Florent
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Angly
authors.forename: Ben
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Felts
authors.forename: James
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Nulton
authors.forename: Forest
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Rohwer
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Salamon
mesh_terms: D001435:Bacteriophages / Q000254:growth & development*; D017753:Ecosystem; D008954:Models, Biological; D014871:Water Microbiology