ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2025
No evidence for Peto's paradox in terrestrial vertebrates.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed.
- Genomic Insights Into the Body Size Evolution in Felidae (Mammalia: Carnivora).Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Mechanistic Insights into Wildlife Cancer and Conservation Strategies Under the One Health Framework.Veterinary sciences · 2026Review
- Indirect genomic effects shape cancer risk across species.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Evolution of the MUC1 gene in eutherian mammals as an adaptation responsible for the increasing incidence of cancer in humans.Biochimica et biophysica acta. Reviews on cancer · 2026Review
- Divergent understandings in comparative oncology.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Reply to Compton et al.: Another paradoxical misunderstanding.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- When cells rebel: a comparative genomics investigation into marsupial cancer susceptibility.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- A Test of the Adaptive Lag Hypothesis of the Evolution of Cancer Suppression and Lifespan in Dog Breeds.Genes · 2026Article
- Learning from plants: is it possible to make an animal organism a non-host for cancer?Frontiers in oncology · 2026Article
- Immune-cancer analyses across mammals reveal a potential trophic level and platelet-linked tradeoff between cancer and trauma mortality.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Divergent evolutionary dynamics of benign and malignant tumors.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- The evolution of cancer and ageing: a history of constraint.Nature reviews. Cancer · 2025Review
- Shrinking to bird size with dinosaur-level cancer defences: Evolution of cancer suppression over macroevolutionary time.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Trans-Scale Insights into Variability in Radiation Cancer Risk Across Tissues, Individuals, and Species.Biology · 2025Review
- Towards a more robust comparative oncology: a Bayesian reanalysis of Peto's paradox and discussion of comparative cancer risk studies in vertebrates.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Peto's paradox's relevance is off the scale.Aging · 2025Article
- Paradoxical indeed.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Reply to Compton et al.: Paradoxical misunderstanding.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Peto's paradox revisited (revisited, revisited, revisited, and revisited yet again).Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Cancer complexity: why we need a novel cancer research strategy.Frontiers in oncology · 2025Article
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Abstract
Larger, longer-lived species are expected to have a higher cancer prevalence compared to smaller, shorter-lived species owing to the greater number of cell divisions that occur during their lifespan. Yet, to date, no evidence has been found to support this expectation, and no association has been found between cancer prevalence and body size across species-a phenomenon known as Peto's paradox. Specifically, while anticancer mechanisms have been identified for individual species, wider phylogenetic evidence has remained elusive. Here, we show that there is no evidence for Peto's paradox across amphibians, birds, mammals, and squamate reptiles: Larger species do in fact have a higher cancer prevalence compared to smaller species. Moreover, we demonstrate that the accumulation of repeated instances of accelerated body size evolution in mammals and birds is associated with a reduction in the prevalence of neoplasia and malignancy, suggesting that increased rates of body size evolution are associated with the evolution of improved cellular growth control. These results represent empirical evidence showing that larger body size is related to higher cancer prevalence, thus rejecting Peto's paradox, and demonstrating the importance of heterogenous routes of body size evolution in shaping anticancer defenses.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.