{"doi":"10.1111/cobi.13644","title":"Darwin, the devil, and the management of transmissible cancers","abstract":"Modern conservation science frequently relies on genetic tools to manage imperiled populations threatened by processes such as habitat fragmentation and infectious diseases. Translocation of individuals to restore genetic diversity (genetic rescue) is increasingly used to manage vulnerable populations (Whiteley et al. 2015), but it can swamp local adaptations and lead to outbreeding depression (Frankham et al. 2011). Thus, genetic management is context dependent and needs evaluation across multiple generations (Fitzpatrick et al. 2020). Genomic studies can help evaluate the extent to which populations are locally adapted to assess the costs and benefits of translocations. Predicting the long-term fitness effects of genetic interventions and their evolutionary consequences is a vital step in managing dwindling populations threatened by emerging infectious diseases. Multicellular organisms have a long evolutionary history with oncogenic phenomena. While some cancer-protection adaptations are very old and phylogenetically well conserved, such as cancer-suppression mechanisms (Nunney 2013), others are species specific and shaped by ecological processes and life-history traits (Ujvari et al. 2016). An increasing number of infectious cancers, virus associated and directly transmissible, are occurring in terrestrial and aquatic environments (Hamede et al. 2020). Thus, cancer is nowadays regarded as a disease of conservation concern (McAloose & Newton 2009), particularly for threatened wildlife (Hamede at al. 2020). We considered the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) and its transmissible cancers as a model to examine the integration of knowledge of host-pathogen evolutionary interactions with wildlife disease management. Devils have been afflicted by a transmissible cancer (devil facial tumor disease [DFTD]) for at least 24 years (Hawkins et al. 2006). The DFTD epidemic has caused significant population declines (McCallum et al. 2009) and led to the species’ listing as endangered (Hawkins et al. 2009). In 2014 another, independently evolved, transmissible cancer (devil facial tumor 2 [DFT2]) was discovered in southeastern Tasmania (Pye et al. 2016b). Translocations of captive or free-range devils sourced from insurance populations with the aim of genetic rescue (Grueber et al. 2019) are being tested, as are field immunizations aimed at stimulating an adaptive immune response (Pye et al. 2018). However, the epidemiological and evolutionary consequences of introducing naïve individuals from insurance populations into diseased populations have not been evaluated comprehensively, thus, current management is unlikely to prevent transmission. Darwinian principles, host-pathogen coevolutionary theory, and the growing literature on ecological and evolutionary principles in oncology (Korolev et al. 2014) suggest that silver bullets are unlikely to result in disease eradication. We considered evolutionary biology and ecology of host-pathogen interactions to highlight why the role of natural selection in host adaptations to cancer should be considered in the management of this species and other epizootics. Early in the epizootic, DFTD caused localized population declines of up to 90% (McCallum et al. 2009). Once tumors were detected, they were universally fatal. After 10 years, DFTD had reduced effects at the epidemic frontline (Hamede et al. 2012). Devils from populations in northwestern Tasmania mounted immune responses to DFTD, concomitant with natural tumor regressions and recovery after infection (Pye et al. 2016a) (Fig 1). Devils with regressed tumors differed genetically from those with nonregressed tumors (Margres et al. 2018a), and tumor regressions appear to be affected by upregulation of putative tumor suppressor RASL11a, a gene not expressed in human cancers (Margres et al. 2020). Allele frequencies in genomic regions associated with immune function and cancer changed significantly 4-6 generations after disease arrival (Epstein","journal":"Conservation Biology","year":2020,"id":61962,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":54,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9563,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":327231,"name":"Thomas Madsen","orcid":"0000-0002-0998-8372","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":327232,"name":"Hamish McCallum","orcid":"0000-0002-3493-0412","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":327233,"name":"Andrew Storfer","orcid":"0000-0002-9414-8588","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":327234,"name":"Paul A. Hohenlohe","orcid":"0000-0002-7616-0161","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":327235,"name":"Hannah V. Siddle","orcid":"0000-0003-2906-4385","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":54342,"name":"Jim Kaufman","orcid":"0000-0002-7216-8422","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":327236,"name":"Mathieu Giraudeau","orcid":"0000-0001-8563-1810","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":327237,"name":"Menna E. Jones","orcid":"0000-0001-7558-9022","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":327238,"name":"Frédéric Thomas","orcid":"0000-0003-2238-1978","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":327239,"name":"Beáta Újvári","orcid":"0000-0003-2391-2988","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":327230,"name":"Rodrigo Hamede","orcid":"0000-0003-1526-225X","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":27,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T21:09:47.114172Z","pmid":"32992406","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}