| 1. |
- Escudier, Bernard, et al.
(författare)
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Multidisciplinary management of metastatic renal cell carcinoma in the era of targeted therapies
- 2012
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Ingår i: Cancer Treatment Reviews. - : Elsevier. - 0305-7372 .- 1532-1967. ; 38:2, s. 127-132
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- The use of targeted agents to treat metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) has significantly extended progression-free and overall survival but raises issues relating to the long-term delivery of care and the sustained monitoring of efficacy and toxicities, certain of which have not previously been experienced. In this paper, an expert group of medical oncologists, urologists and oncology nurses and pharmacists review and make informal recommendations on the multidisciplinary management of mRCC in the light of progress made and problems that have arisen. Decentralisation of care, with a shift in emphasis from large to small hospitals and possibly to the community, may offer advantages of cost and convenience. However, the major responsibility for care should continue to lie with clinicians (either medical oncologists or urologists) with extensive experience in mRCC, assisted by specialist nurses, and working in centres with facilities adequate to monitor efficacy and manage toxicities. That said, the extended survival of patients emphasises the importance of compliance and the long-term prevention, detection and management of side effects. Much of this will take place in the community. There is therefore a need for multidisciplinary working to extend beyond specialist centres to include general practitioners, community nurses and pharmacists. Although this paper focuses on mRCC, many of the considerations discussed are also relevant to the management of more common solid tumours in the era of targeted therapy.
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| 2. |
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| 3. |
- Nilsson, Karin A., 1977-, et al.
(författare)
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Including the life cycle in food webs
- 2017
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Ingår i: Adaptive food webs. - Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. - 9781316871867 - 9781107182110 ; , s. 121-145
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Introduction: To grow and reproduce is fundamental for living organisms. In essence all organisms go through a life cycle with ontogenetically driven changes in their physiological rates and trophic interactions (Figure 9.1; Box 9.1). This ontogenetic development occurs even in unicellular organisms but is more striking in other groups. For example: dragonflies undergo metamorphoses that span several habitats, Atlantic marlin increase up to 500 times their length, and the cod-worm has different host requirements for each life-history stage. All of these ontogenetic changes correspond to large shifts in the ecological role of an individual. In spite of the drastic changes many individuals undergo over their life history, classical ecological theory typically assumes that all individuals within a population are identical. As a consequence, a large part of our ecological understanding relies on this assumption. This is surprising considering that ecological theory strongly links to evolution, which is critically dependent on variation among individuals. Acknowledging ecological variation of individuals within the species is relatively recent to food-web ecology. While individual variation can arise from genetic or stochastic processes, this chapter focuses on individual variation that relates to ontogenetic development. Biological interactions that are susceptible to ontogenetic variation include: resource use, vulnerability to predators and parasites, mutualistic interactions, cannibalism, and commensalism. Therefore the consideration of ontogeny has major implications for the way we consider food-web topology (Box 9.2). In a broader sense, the function of an organism, such as the nutrient fluxes it contributes to and the ecosystem services it takes part in, may also change over ontogeny. By ignoring the individual life history, ecologists focus on interactions between populations rather than between individuals, an abstraction that may be biologically inaccurate. In fact, differences between individuals within species can exceed, and have larger effects on food-web dynamics, than differences between individuals of different species. This suggests that the consideration of differences between life stages within populations is essential for our understanding of food-web structure and ecosystem functioning.
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| 4. |
- Zhang, Lai, et al.
(författare)
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Food-web dynamics under climate change
- 2017
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Biological Sciences. - : Royal Society. - 0962-8452 .- 1471-2954. ; 284:1867
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Climate change affects ecological communities through its impact on the physiological performance of individuals. However, the population dynamic of species well inside their thermal niche is also determined by competitors, prey and predators, in addition to being influenced by temperature changes. We use a trait-based food-web model to examine how the interplay between the direct physiological effects from temperature and the indirect effects due to changing interactions between populations shapes the ecological consequences of climate change for populations and for entire communities. Our simulations illustrate how isolated communities deteriorate as populations go extinct when the environment moves outside the species' thermal niches. High-trophic-level species are most vulnerable, while the ecosystem function of lower trophic levels is less impacted. Open communities can compensate for the loss of ecosystem function by invasions of new species. Individual populations show complex responses largely uncorrelated with the direct impact of temperature change on physiology. Such complex responses are particularly evident during extinction and invasion events of other species, where climaticallywell-adapted species may be brought to extinction by the changed food-web topology. Our results highlight that the impact of climate change on specific populations is largely unpredictable, and apparently well-adapted species may be severely impacted.
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| 5. |
- Zhang, Lai, et al.
(författare)
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Size-based predictions of food web patterns
- 2014
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Ingår i: Theoretical Ecology. - : Springer. - 1874-1738 .- 1874-1746. ; 7:1, s. 23-33
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We employ size-based theoretical arguments to derive simple analytic predictions of ecological patterns and properties of natural communities: size-spectrum expo- nent, maximum trophic level, and susceptibility to invasive species. The predictions are brought about by assuming that an infinite number of species are continuously distributed on a size–trait axis. It is, however, an open question whether such predictions are valid for a food web with a finite num- ber of species embedded in a network structure. We address this question by comparing the size-based predictions to results from dynamic food web simulations with varying species richness. To this end, we develop a new size- and trait-based food web model that can be simplified into an analytically solvable size-based model. We confirm existing solutions for the size distribution and derive novel predic- tions for maximum trophic level and invasion resistance. Our results show that the predicted size-spectrum exponent is borne out in the simulated food webs even with few species, albeit with a systematic bias. The predicted max- imum trophic level turns out to be an upper limit since simulated food webs may have a lower number of trophic levels, especially for low species richness, due to structural constraints. The size-based model possesses an evolutionary stable state and is therefore un-invadable. In contrast, the food web simulations show that all communities, irrespec- tive of number of species, are equally open to invasions. We use these results to discuss the validity of size-based pre- dictions in the light of the structural constraints imposed by food webs.
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