  Hypercycles are information integration systems which are thought to overcome
the information crisis of prebiotic evolution by ensuring the coexistence of
several short templates. For imperfect template replication, we derive a simple
expression for the maximum number of distinct templates $n_m$ that can coexist
in a hypercycle and show that it is a decreasing function of the length $L$ of
the templates. In the case of high replication accuracy we find that the
product $n_m L$ tends to a constant value, limiting thus the information
content of the hypercycle. Template coexistence is achieved either as a
stationary equilibrium (stable fixed point) or a stable periodic orbit in which
the total concentration of functional templates is nonzero. For the hypercycle
system studied here we find numerical evidence that the existence of an
unstable fixed point is a necessary condition for the presence of periodic
orbits.
