Squirrels on North American college and university campuses have been the subject of much animated conversation in informal venues, but a systematic assessment of their distribution across this habitat type has not been undertaken until now. We collected reports of squirrel species’ presence and absence from faculty experts at 536 campuses in Canada and the continental United States, and found that squirrels are nearly ubiquitous on campuses (95% had at least one species, and 40% had three or more), but that only a select few species are common campus residents. Foremost among these is the eastern gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis—on 62% of surveyed campuses), followed by the eastern fox squirrel (Sciurus niger), eastern chipmunk (Tamias striatus), North American red squirrel (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus), and woodchuck (Marmota monax). Eastern gray and fox squirrels partition campuses with one another, both in their shared native/core range and on the West Coast. While these invasive eastern species are present on campuses on the West Coast, notably, contingency analysis did not provide evidence that they are the primary factor discouraging western gray squirrels (Sciurus griseus) from using these habitats. The inventory and analyses presented here can provide a basis for longitudinal studies both within and across campuses and may be productively combined with initiatives that involve students in research.
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 armor-like, spine-like, 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 armor-like, spine-like, and noxious defenses, we present an overview of different ways these 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 anti-predator defenses, which can facilitate therapy approaches which aim to give the predators (the immune system) the upper hand. This cross-taxa comparison is also informative for evolutionary ecology. Cancer provides an opportunity to observe how prey evolve in the context of a unique predatory threat (the immune system) and varied environments.
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