ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2015
Towards cancer-aware life-history modelling.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Evolutionary perspectives on endometrial cancer: antagonistic pleiotropy.Molecular & cellular oncology · 2026Review
- Obesity and renal cell carcinoma: Biological mechanisms and perspectives.Seminars in cancer biology · 2023Review
- Cancer Prevalence Across Vertebrates.Research square · 2023Article
- The occurrence of cancer in vertebrates: a mini review.Journal of biological research (Thessalonike, Greece) · 2020Review
- Article
- Comparative Oncology: New Insights into an Ancient Disease.iScience · 2020Review
- Lifetime cancer prevalence and life history traits in mammals.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2020Article
- All's well that ends well: why large species have short telomeres.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Article
- DNA helix: the importance of being AT-rich.Mammalian genome : official journal of the International Mammalian Genome Society · 2017Article
- Size, longevity and cancer: age structure.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2016Article
- Peto's paradox and the promise of comparative oncology.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2015Article
- Inclusive fitness effects can select for cancer suppression into old age.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2015Article
- Peto's paradox and human cancers.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2015Article
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2 authors.
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Abstract
Studies of body size evolution, and life-history theory in general, are conducted without taking into account cancer as a factor that can end an organism's reproductive lifespan. This reflects a tacit assumption that predation, parasitism and starvation are of overriding importance in the wild. We argue here that even if deaths directly attributable to cancer are a rarity in studies of natural populations, it remains incorrect to infer that cancer has not been of importance in shaping observed life histories. We present first steps towards a cancer-aware life-history theory, by quantifying the decrease in the length of the expected reproductively active lifespan that follows from an attempt to grow larger than conspecific competitors. If all else is equal, a larger organism is more likely to develop cancer, but, importantly, many factors are unlikely to be equal. Variations in extrinsic mortality as well as in the pace of life--larger organisms are often near the slow end of the fast-slow life-history continuum--can make realized cancer incidences more equal across species than what would be observed in the absence of adaptive responses to cancer risk (alleviating the so-called Peto's paradox). We also discuss reasons why patterns across species can differ from within-species predictions. Even if natural selection diminishes cancer susceptibility differences between species, within-species differences can remain. In many sexually dimorphic cases, we predict males to be more cancer-prone than females, forming an understudied component of sexual conflict.
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