Nature Reviews Microbiology 10, 583–588 (2012)

In the original article, the order and citations for references 1 and 2 was incorrect. In the section Sprint, the reference citation should have been as follows: “A chant erupts from the eukaryotic crowd: “Kill the winner! Kill the winner!” (REF. 2.)”. In the reference list, references 1 and 2 were listed in the wrong order; this has now been corrected as listed below. We apologize to the authors and to readers for this error and for any confusion caused.

Reference 1 is as follows: Nyholm, S. V. & McFall-Ngai, M. The winnowing: establishing the squid–vibrio symbiosis. Nature Rev. Microbiol. 2, 632–642 (2004).

Reference 2 is as follows: Thingstad, T. F. & Lignell, R. Theoretical models for the control of bacterial growth rate, abundance, diversity and carbon demand. Aquat. Microb. Ecol. 13, 19–27 (1997).