Unions against governments: explaining general strikes in Western Europe, 1980-2006

Across Western Europe, unions have increasingly engaged in staging general strikes against governments since 1980. This increase in general strikes is puzzling as it has occurred at the same time as economic strikes have been on the decline. We posit that theories developed to explain economic strikes hold little explanatory power in accounting for variation in general strikes across countries and over time. Instead, we develop a framework based on political variables; in particular, whether governments have included or excluded unions in framing policy reforms; the party position of the government; and the type of government. Our empirical analysis, based on a conditional fixed-effects logit estimation of 84 general strikes between 1980 and 2006, shows that union exclusion from the process of reforming policies, government strength, and the party position of the government can provide an initial explanation for the occurrence of general strikes

Geographical Variation in Selection, from Phenotypes to Molecules

Molecular technologies now allow researchers to isolate quantitative trait loci (QTLs) and measure patterns of gene sequence variation within chromosomal regions containing important polymorphisms. I develop a simulation model to investigate gene sequence evolution within genomic regions that harbor QTLs. The QTLs influence a trait experiencing geographical variation in selection, which is common in nature and produces obvious differentiation at the phenotypic level. Counter to expectations, the simulations suggest that selection can substantially affect quantitative genetic variation without altering the amount and pattern of molecular variation at sites closely linked to the QTLs. Even with large samples of gene sequences, the likelihood of rejecting neutrality is often low. The exception is situations where strong selection is combined with low migration among demes, conditions that may be common in many plant species. The results have implications for gene sequence surveys and, perhaps more generally, for interpreting the apparently weak connection between levels of molecular and quantitative trait variation within species

Village-Scale Practices and Water Sources in Indigenous Mexico after the Neoliberalizing of Social Property

To establish whether social property villages ("núcleos agrarios") in indigenous, well-watered parts of Mexico are maintaining the same degree of village-scale control of water sources that they practiced before the neoliberal land tenure reforms of the 1990s, three sources of data were investigated in two regions: the Huasteca of San Luis Potosí state (home to indigenous Teenek, Nahua, and Pame residents, as well as non-indigenous people), and the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca state (home to indigenous Zapotec and Chinantec residents, and a smaller number of non-indigenous people). The three data sources were: 1. Archival documents at state offices of the National Agrarian Registry (Registro Agrario Nacional, or RAN); 2. Participatory research mapping (PRM) data acquired in fifteen villages, with the author as sole academic researcher in one of these (the Zapotec núcleo of Talea de Castro); 3. GIS (geodata) analysis of water sources (springs) and land tenure zones in both regions, encompassing about 460 social property núcleos as well as private and public lands. Neither spatially-defined ownership of land where water resources are located, nor conceptual rights and obligations (enacted through local practices), were found to have undergone extraordinary changes in the two decades since the neoliberal reforms were initiated. However, these reforms were found to have played a key role in the gradual shift in legal and practical emphasis away from a fusion of village and individual attachments to water sources (regardless of legal or locally-defined land tenure), and toward a simplified, spatially unambiguous distinction between village and individual land units, linked to a nationwide program of water rights concessions which favor the individual and the state over the village. This shift in emphasis is being successfully resisted in many villages, particularly in indigenous ones. This resistance often takes the form of creative engagement with state initiatives such as the 1993-2006 land surveying and certification program PROCEDE and its successor FANAR. Nevertheless, village orientation toward water partly depends on de facto, orally transmitted local practices which will vanish in some villages during the next several decades

The genomic scale of fluctuating selection in a natural plant population

This study characterizes evolution at ≈1.86 million Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) within a natural population of yellow monkeyflower (Mimulus guttatus). Most SNPs exhibit minimal change over a span of 23 generations (less than 1% per year), consistent with neutral evolution in a large population. However, several thousand SNPs display strong fluctuations in frequency. Multiple lines of evidence indicate that these ‘Fluctuating SNPs’ are driven by temporally varying selection. Unlinked loci exhibit synchronous changes with the same allele increasing consistently in certain time intervals but declining in others. This synchrony is sufficiently pronounced that we can roughly classify intervals into two categories, “green” and “yellow,” corresponding to conflicting selection regimes. Alleles increasing in green intervals are associated with early life investment in vegetative tissue and delayed flowering. The alternative alleles that increase in yellow intervals are associated with rapid progression to flowering. Selection on the Fluctuating SNPs produces a strong ripple effect on variation across the genome. Accounting for estimation error, we estimate the distribution of allele frequency change per generation in this population. While change is minimal for most SNPs, diffuse hitchhiking effects generated by selected loci may be driving neutral SNPs to a much greater extent than classic genetic drift

Kin Selection in the Annual Plant Impatiens capensis

Kin selection occurs when phenotypic variation in a character or set of characters is heritable, spatially structured, and has differential fitness effects on neighboring individuals. Spatially structured, heritable variation has been found for many characters of the annual plant Impatiens capensis (the first two criteria). By manipulating plant growth by apical removal, I show that Impatiens fitness is strongly influenced by the phenotypes of neighboring plants, corroborating a previous study. A specific suite of phenotypes relating to plant architecture is consistently beneficial to neighboring plants. In addition, these manipulative experiments sug- gest that phenotypic plasticity may often impede purely observational field studies of kin selec- tion in plant populations

Connecting QTLS to the G-Matrix of Evolutionary Quantitative Genetics

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Kelly, J. K. (2009), CONNECTING QTLS TO THE G‐MATRIX OF EVOLUTIONARY QUANTITATIVE GENETICS. Evolution, 63: 813-825. doi:10.1111/j.1558-5646.2008.00590.x, which has been published in final form at http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1558-5646.2008.00590.x. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.Evolutionary quantitative genetics has recently advanced in two distinct streams. Many biologists address evolutionary questions by estimating phenotypic selection and genetic (co)variances (G matrices). Simultaneously, an increasing number of studies have applied quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping methods to dissect variation. Both conceptual and practical difficulties have isolated these two foci of quantitative genetics. A conceptual integration follows from the recognition that QTL allele frequencies are the essential variables relating the G-matrix to marker-based mapping experiments. Breeding designs initiated from randomly selected parental genotypes can be used to estimate QTL-specific genetic (co)variances. These statistics appropriately distill allelic variation and provide an explicit population context for QTL mapping estimates. Within this framework, one can parse the G-matrix into a set of mutually exclusive genomic components and ask whether these parts are similar or dissimilar in their respective features, for example the magnitude of phenotypic effects and the extent and nature of pleiotropy. As these features are critical determinants of sustained response to selection, the integration of QTL mapping methods into G-matrix estimation can provide a concrete, genetically based experimental program to investigate the evolutionary potential of natural populations

A Manipulative Experiment to Estimate Biparental Inbreeding in Monkeyflowers

Biparental inbreeding occurs when plants receive pollen from genetically related neighbors. The frequency of biparental inbreeding in natural populations is unknown but directly relevant to the evolution of plant mating systems. We suggest a simple manipulative experiment to distinguish the effects of biparental inbreeding from those of self‐fertilization. The basis of the method is to compare the levels of inbreeding in plants with and without the potential to outcross with genetic relatives. We eliminate the potential for biparental inbreeding by transplanting seedlings to different locations within a population. The level of inbreeding is then estimated from homozygosity at molecular markers. This method is applied in a study of two natural populations of Mimulus guttatus (the yellow monkeyflower) using microsatellites as marker loci. In contrast to previous studies of this species, our study finds no evidence of biparental inbreeding in either population

On the importance of balancing selection in plants

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Delph, L. F. and Kelly, J. K. (2014), On the importance of balancing selection in plants. New Phytol, 201: 45–56. doi:10.1111/nph.12441, which has been published in final form at http://doi.org/10.1111/nph.12441. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.Balancing selection refers to a variety of selective regimes that maintain advantageous genetic diversity within populations. We review the history of the ideas regarding the types of selection that maintain such polymorphism in flowering plants, notably heterozygote advantage, negative frequency-dependent selection, and spatial heterogeneity. One shared feature of these mechanisms is that whether an allele is beneficial or detrimental is conditional on its frequency in the population. We highlight examples of balancing selection on a variety of discrete traits. These include the well-referenced case of self-incompatibility and recent evidence from species with nuclear-cytoplasmic gynodioecy, both of which exhibit trans-specific polymorphism, a hallmark of balancing selection. We also discuss and give examples of how spatial heterogeneity in particular, which is often thought unlikely to allow protected polymorphism, can maintain genetic variation in plants (which are rooted in place) as a result of microhabitat selection. Lastly, we discuss limitations of the protected polymorphism concept for quantitative traits, where selection can inflate the genetic variance without maintaining specific alleles indefinitely. We conclude that while discrete-morph variation provides the most unambiguous cases of protected polymorphism, they represent only a fraction of the balancing selection at work in plants

Selfing Can Facilitate Transitions between Pollination Syndromes

Pollinator-mediated selection on plants can favor transitions to a new pollinator depending on the relative abundances and efficiencies of pollinators present in the community. A frequently observed example is the transition from bee pollination to hummingbird pollination. We present a population genetic model that examines whether the ability to inbreed can influence evolutionary change in traits that underlie pollinator attraction. We find that a transition to a more efficient but less abundant pollinator is favored under a broadened set of ecological conditions if plants are capable of delayed selfing rather than obligately outcrossing. Delayed selfing allows plants carrying an allele that attracts the novel pollinator to reproduce even when this pollinator is rare, providing reproductive assurance. In addition, delayed selfing weakens the effects of Haldane’s sieve by increasing the fixation probability for recessive alleles that confer adaptation to the new pollinator. Our model provides novel insight into the paradoxical abundance of recessive mutations in adaptation to hummingbird attraction. It further predicts that transitions to efficient but less abundant pollinators (such as hummingbirds in certain communities) should disproportionately occur in self-compatible lineages. Currently available mating system data sets are consistent with this prediction, and we suggest future areas of research that will enable a rigorous test of this theory.National Institutes of Health (F32 GM 110988-3)National Institutes of Health (R01 GM073990-02)National Science Foundation (DEB-1542402

Epistasis Is a Major Determinant of the Additive Genetic Variance in Mimulus guttatus

A grant from the One-University Open Access Fund at the University of Kansas was used to defray the author’s publication fees in this Open Access journal. The Open Access Fund, administered by librarians from the KU, KU Law, and KUMC libraries, is made possible by contributions from the offices of KU Provost, KU Vice Chancellor for Research & Graduate Studies, and KUMC Vice Chancellor for Research. For more information about the Open Access Fund, please see http://library.kumc.edu/authors-fund.xml.The influence of genetic interactions (epistasis) on the genetic variance of quantitative traits is a major unresolved problem relevant to medical, agricultural, and evolutionary genetics. The additive genetic component is typically a high proportion of the total genetic variance in quantitative traits, despite that underlying genes must interact to determine phenotype. This study estimates direct and interaction effects for 11 pairs of Quantitative Trait Loci (QTLs) affecting floral traits within a single population of Mimulus guttatus. With estimates of all 9 genotypes for each QTL pair, we are able to map from QTL effects to variance components as a function of population allele frequencies, and thus predict changes in variance components as allele frequencies change. This mapping requires an analytical framework that properly accounts for bias introduced by estimation errors. We find that even with abundant interactions between QTLs, most of the genetic variance is likely to be additive. However, the strong dependency of allelic average effects on genetic background implies that epistasis is a major determinant of the additive genetic variance, and thus, the population’s ability to respond to selection.This work was supported by the National Institute of Health (Grant #: NIH 69314). http://www.nih.gov/ The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript