Throughout the range of parameters that did not result into extinction

Whenever the hn plasmid successfully established in the population it reduced the fitness advantage of hc. Since hn shared the benefit of higher copy number with hc and also had a lower cost, it had a higher intra-host fitness. In a typical result rapidly increased in frequency but was soon followed by hn which largely replaced hc in coinfected host. The reduction in the frequency of hc was followed by back invasion. Since hn had a limited capacity to invade lc, both coexisted in a stable steady state where the pure plasmid host population was dominated and co-infected host population was dominated by hn. Keeping other parameters the same omission of hn resulted in invasion by hc and near extinction of lc. Across a wide range of costs of the plasmid the nonconjugal plasmids were observed to restrict the width of copy numbers over which the RPS situation worked. The low copy number wild type was able to back invade the higher copy mutants at a much smaller copy number when non-conjugal plasmids were present. The two modes of cheating thus had antagonistic effects resulting into effective arrest of escalation. The RPS dynamics itself was robust to changes in other parameters. Throughout the range of parameters that did not result into extinction of all types of plasmids, low copy number plasmids could exist either stably or in RPS dynamics. The RPS limit lines were unaffected by changes in e as long as it was independent of the copy number. Both m and l pushed down the limit line marginally in the absence of cheaters. However, in presence of non-conjugal Tubeimoside-I cheaters m exerted a strong effect in lowering the RPS limit whereas l had a marginal effect. In other words increase in m helped the stability of low copy number plasmids in presence of non-conjugal cheaters. Unlike the fitness effect of copy number, the conjugation efficiencies bl and bh had a Methylophiopogonanone-A linear effect on fitness. Plasmid with higher conjugation efficiency was selected over one with lower efficiency when other parameters were equal.Therefore although conjugal and non-conjugal plasmids coexisted, coexistence of different conjugation efficiencies was not possible. Since selection for conjugation efficiencies was linear, there was a unidirectional selection for highest conjugation efficiency.

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