Fig. 2

Active TE accumulation patterns for the different simulations. Average abundance of TEs per host individual is plotted as a function of the cycle time. The three different accumulation patterns (host extinction, TE accumulation, and TE extinction) are plotted in different columns. Specifically, we plotted all 575 simulations which led to host extinction in the first column, and all 23 simulations which led to TE accumulation in the second column, and all 169 simulations which led to the TE extinction in the third column. The different colours and line types indicate whether it was the high (purple, solid line) or low (yellow, dashed line) condition that was associated with the accumulation pattern for each variable, and in fact, the only difference between the rows is the colouring of the lines. Simulations in column 2 which seem to end prematurely reached the maximum 72 h time limit. We did not increase the limit because the time taken per cycle was increasing exponentially