Biodiversity as the basis of Ecosystem Stability
Overview Cancer Ecology Commentary begins a several part examination of the role which biodiversity plays in stabilizing ecosystems against untoward external disturbance. By ecosystem we mean a collection of living organisms in a given area interacting with each other and that areas’ environment. A cancer ecosystem in turn can be thought of as the tumor itself, the microenvironment in which it resides within a host along with that host’s environmental and genetic characteristics. Cancer ecology seeks to understand how cancer development and progression could be explained as an understanding of the interactions occurring across those elements. In this upcoming review we will ask what some of those characteristics and forces are which might act to stabilize the ecosystem and consequently impede cancer’s evolution. This then might provide an insight into potential ecosystem modification to influence those characteristics and forces as anticancer therapy. From the ecological standpoin...