Phage existence as they multiply during a productive cycle
Key is that a vegetative phage contrasts with a prophage.
Here vegetative is being used approximately equivalently to the contrast between, for example, the bacterial vegetative state (or growth) versus a non-replicative endospore form though with the caveat that propahges still replicate, just not via phage productive cycles. This is the definition from Adams (1959, InterScience, p. 442): "The form in which phage (or phage genes) multiply during the lytic cycle of phage growth."
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