Cancer is a widespread disease that affects most of the metazoans. However, cancer development is a slow process and, long before causing the death of the individual, may weaken organisms’ capacities and impair their interactions with other species. Yet, the impact of cancer development on biotic interactions, and over the dynamics of the whole ecosystem, is still largely unexplored. As well, the feedback of altered biotic interactions on the evolution of resistance against cancer in the context of community ecology has not been investigated. From this new perspective, we theoretically investigate how cancer can challenge expected interaction outcomes in a predator–prey model system, and how, in return, these altered interaction outcomes could affect evolution of resistance mechanism against cancer. First, we demonstrate a clear difference between prey and predator vulnerability to cancer, with cancer having a limited impact on prey populations. Second, we show that biotic interactions can surprisingly lead to a null or positive effect of cancer on population densities. Finally, our evolutionary analysis sheds light on how biotic interactions can lead to diverse resistance levels in predator populations. While its role in ecosystems is mostly unknown, we demonstrate that cancer in wildlife is an important ecological and evolutionary force to consider.

中文翻译：

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捕食塑造了癌症对种群动态和癌症抗性进化的影响。


癌症是一种影响大多数后生动物的广泛疾病。然而，癌症的发展是一个缓慢的过程，早在导致个体死亡之前，就可能削弱生物体的能力并损害其与其他物种的相互作用。然而，癌症发展对生物相互作用以及整个生态系统动态的影响仍然很大程度上未被探索。此外，在群落生态背景下，生物相互作用的改变对癌症抗性进化的反馈尚未得到研究。从这个新的角度出发，我们从理论上研究了癌症如何挑战捕食者-被捕食模型系统中预期的相互作用结果，以及这些改变的相互作用结果如何反过来影响癌症抵抗机制的进化。首先，我们证明了猎物和捕食者对癌症的脆弱性存在明显差异，癌症对猎物种群的影响有限。其次，我们发现生物相互作用可以令人惊讶地导致癌症对人口密度的无效或积极影响。最后，我们的进化分析揭示了生物相互作用如何导致捕食者群体产生不同的抵抗水平。虽然其在生态系统中的作用大多未知，但我们证明野生动物中的癌症是需要考虑的重要生态和进化力量。