ArticleEvolution, medicine, and public health2020
Lifetime cancer prevalence and life history traits in mammals.
Article in Evolution, medicine, and public health, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 56 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
56 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 94 citations in OpenAlex.
- Diet, Microbes, and Cancer Across the Tree of Life: a Systematic Review.Current nutrition reports · 2022Pooled it
- Evolutionary study of oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes in breast carcinoma.Journal of Taibah University Medical Sciences · 2026Article
- Mechanistic Insights into Wildlife Cancer and Conservation Strategies Under the One Health Framework.Veterinary sciences · 2026Review
- When cells rebel: a comparative genomics investigation into marsupial cancer susceptibility.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Of Barriers and Loops-How Evolution Limits Most Cancer Risks to Older Ages.Cancer discovery · 2026Review
- Leveraging comparative phylogenetics for evolutionary medicine: applications to comparative oncology.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2026Article
- Evolutionary perspectives on endometrial cancer: antagonistic pleiotropy.Molecular & cellular oncology · 2026Review
- Immune-cancer analyses across mammals reveal a potential trophic level and platelet-linked tradeoff between cancer and trauma mortality.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Article
- Immunological surveillance against cancer across mammals.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Coevolution of cooperative lifestyles and reduced cancer prevalence in mammals.Science advances · 2025Article
- Divergent evolutionary dynamics of benign and malignant tumors.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Harmonized nonhuman cancer database.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Recent Non-LTR Retrotransposon Activity Predicts Cancer Prevalence in Mammals.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Advancing cancer research via comparative oncology.Nature reviews. Cancer · 2025Review
- Shrinking to bird size with dinosaur-level cancer defences: Evolution of cancer suppression over macroevolutionary time.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Towards a more robust comparative oncology: a Bayesian reanalysis of Peto's paradox and discussion of comparative cancer risk studies in vertebrates.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Natural resistance to cancers in long-lived mammals: genomic mechanisms and experimental evidence to explain Peto's paradox.Science China. Life sciences · 2025Article
- Reply to Compton et al.: Paradoxical misunderstanding.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- The relationship between diet, plasma glucose, and cancer prevalence across vertebrates.Nature communications · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 5 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundCancer is a common diagnosis in many mammalian species, yet they vary in their vulnerability to cancer. The factors driving this variation are unknown, but life history theory offers potential explanations to why cancer defense mechanisms are not equal across species. METHODOLOGY: Here we report the prevalence of neoplasia and malignancy in 37 mammalian species, representing 11 mammalian orders, using 42 years of well curated necropsy data from the San Diego Zoo and San Diego Zoo Safari Park. We collected data on life history components of these species and tested for associations between life history traits and both neoplasia and malignancy, while controlling for phylogenetic history.
resultsThese results support Peto's paradox, in that we find no association between lifespan and/or body mass and the prevalence of neoplasia or malignancy. However, a positive relationship exists between litter size and prevalence of malignancy (P = 0.005, Adj. R2 = 0.212), suggesting that a species' life history strategy may influence cancer vulnerabilities. Lastly, we tested for the relationship between placental invasiveness and malignancy. We find no evidence for an association between placental depth and malignancy prevalence (P = 0.618, Adj. R2 = 0.068).
conclusionsLife history theory offers a powerful framework to understand variation in cancer defenses across the tree of life. These findings provide insight into the relationship between life history traits and cancer vulnerabilities, which suggest a trade-off between reproduction and cancer defenses. LAY SUMMARY: Why are some mammals more vulnerable to cancer than others? We test whether life history trade-offs may explain this variation in cancer risk. Bigger, longer-lived animals do not develop more cancer compared to smaller, shorter-lived animals. However, we find a positive association between litter size and cancer prevalence in mammals.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.