Cancer Ecology: Niche Construction, Keystone Species, Ecological Succession, and Ergodic Theory

Abstract

Parallels between cancer and ecological systems have been increasingly recognized and extensively reviewed. However, a more unified framework of understanding cancer as an evolving dynamical system that undergoes a sequence of interconnected changes over time, from a dormant microtumor to disseminated metastatic disease, still needs to be developed. Here, we focus on several examples of such mechanisms, namely, how in cancer niche construction a metabolic adaptation and consequent change to the tumor microenvironment (niche modification) becomes an important factor in evasion of the predator (immune system), facilitating disease progression; how tumor establishment and propagation is driven by the tumor’s own keystone species, the cancer stem cells; and how the succession of stages of metastatic dissemination can be informed by ergodic theory and forest ecology.