A minimal ecological scenario of alternating periods of feast and famine is used to study overall fitness of different strategies. Periods of famine and feast can vary between scenarios. Based on the observed relation between growth and death (Figs. 1 and 2), we assume that bacteria cannot independently choose growth and death rate, but are forced to trade-off growth against death according to the exponential relation γ(μ) = 0.21 d − 1exp (1.0 h μ). 