In nature, many multicellular and unicellular organisms use constitutive defenses such as armor, spines, and noxious chemicals to keep predators at bay. These defenses render the prey difficult and/or dangerous to subdue and handle, which confers a strong deterrent for predators. The distinct benefit of this mode of defense is that prey can defend in place and continue activities such as foraging even under imminent threat of predation. The same qualitative types of armored, spiny, and noxious defenses have evolved independently and repeatedly in nature, and we present evidence that cancer is no exception. Cancer cells exist in environments inundated with predator-like immune cells, so the ability of cancer cells to defend in place while foraging and proliferating would clearly be advantageous. We argue that these defenses repeatedly evolve in cancers and may be among the most advanced and important adaptations of cancers. By drawing parallels between several taxa exhibiting armored, spiny, and noxious defenses, we present an overview of different ways constitutive defenses can appear and emphasize how phenotypes that appear vastly different can nevertheless have the same essential functions. This cross-taxa comparison reveals how cancer phenotypes can be interpreted as antipredator defenses, which can facilitate therapy approaches which aim to give the predators (the immune system) the upper hand. Furthermore, cancer systems are microcosms in which evolutionary ecologists can observe how prey evolve in response to nontraditional predators which are neither driven by individual gain nor deterred by individual danger.

中文翻译：

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恐惧生态：脊椎、盔甲和有毒化学物质在癌症和自然界中阻止捕食者

在自然界中，许多多细胞和单细胞生物使用本构防御，例如盔甲、刺和有毒化学物质来阻止捕食者。这些防御使猎物难以和/或危险地制服和处理，这为捕食者提供了强大的威慑力。这种防御模式的明显好处是，即使在迫在眉睫的捕食威胁下，猎物也可以就地防御并继续进行觅食等活动。相同的定性类型的装甲、多刺和有毒防御系统在自然界中独立且反复进化，我们提供的证据表明癌症也不例外。癌细胞存在于被类似捕食者的免疫细胞淹没的环境中，因此癌细胞在觅食和增殖的同时进行原地防御的能力显然是有利的。我们认为这些防御在癌症中反复进化，并且可能是癌症最先进和最重要的适应性之一。通过在表现出装甲、多刺和有害防御的几个分类群之间进行比较，我们概述了组成防御出现的不同方式，并强调了看似截然不同的表型如何仍然具有相同的基本功能。这种跨分类群比较揭示了癌症表型如何被解释为抗捕食者防御，这可以促进旨在使捕食者（免疫系统）占上风的治疗方法。此外，癌症系统是一个缩影，进化生态学家可以在其中观察猎物如何进化以应对非传统捕食者，这些捕食者既不受个人利益的驱使，也不受个人危险的影响。