Globalisation and National Incentives for Protecting Environmental Goods

This article tries to explain national incentives for protecting environmental goods either autonomously or collectively; it explores how globalisation has affected those incentives; and it suggests how national environmental policy might respond so as to ensure its effectiveness. The central argument is that national incentives for environmental protection may to a considerable extent be explained by a combination of the type of environmental good to be protected (in terms of public goods theory) and the effects of environmental protection measures on international competitiveness. Arrangements for protecting environmental goods can be ranked according to their centripetal effects on non-participating countries. Centripetal effects are strongest in the case of club goods (1), followed by private goods (2), public goods (3), and common pool resources (4). The centripetal effects resulting from the type of environmental good can be further reinforced by competitive advantages resulting from environmental protection measures; they can be weakened by competitive disadvantages; or they can remain unchanged due to competitive neutrality. The combination of four types of environmental goods and three types of competitive effects (positive, negative, neutral) results in twelve possible cases, with differing national incentives for autonomous and collective environmental protection. Given specific assumptions, these twelve cases can be ranked with regard to the severity of collective action problems they involve. The article includes a short empirical illustration for each case. It also analyses how globalisation (in the form of increasing trade) and some of its driving forces (in the form of free trade agreements) influence national incentives and legal possibilities for environmental protection. This article concludes with a brief discussion of four options for (re-)expanding the action space for national environmental policies under the condition of economic globalisation.

A new function of hydrocarbons in insect communication : maternal care and offspring signalling in the European earwig

International audienc

Benefits and costs of earwig ( Forficula auricularia ) family life

The evolution of parental care and family group formation critically depends on offspring survival benefits and parental fecundity costs of care under given ecological conditions. Investigations of the functional significance of care in insect species that exhibit facultative parental care have been relatively rare but may be of particular interest for better understanding of benefit and cost schedules at an early evolutionary stage. In this study, aspects of benefits and costs of care were addressed in the sub-social European earwig (Forficula auricularia; Dermaptera: Forficulidae) by manipulating the presence of tending mothers and brood size in a fully crossed experimental design. Larvae growing in broods tended by their mother or of reduced size showed a higher survival probability than larvae growing in untended or large broods, as predicted if maternal care is beneficial and shaped by a trade-off between number and quality of offspring. Analysis of patterns of food consumption and developmental time further suggested that the benefit of maternal attendance is mediated by the maternal provisioning of food, while the quality-quantity trade-off seemed to be driven by sibling rivalry. Further, tending mothers delayed the production of a second clutch, indicating a potential cost of care in terms of lifetime fecundity. This study experimentally shows benefits and potential costs of maternal care and family group formation in the European earwig. More detailed behavioural experiments will be required to fully understand how behavioural interactions among family members mediate these reproductive outcome

Differential effects of offspring condition-dependent signals on maternal care regulation in the European earwig

Parent-offspring conflict theory predicts the evolution of offspring solicitation signals that can influence the amount and/or the duration of parental investment. Short-term effects of offspring solicitation signals on parental food provisioning have been widely demonstrated, but persistent effects of offspring signals on the maintenance of parental care have been rarely studied. Also, the relation between the amount of care provided to the brood and how it is distributed among individual offspring within a brood is not well enough understood. Here, we investigated in the European earwig (Forficula auricularia) the effects of offspring condition-dependent chemical signals on the maintenance of maternal care among broods and the distribution of maternal food within broods. Mothers were isolated from their brood for 3days and continuously exposed to chemical signals extracted from broods of experimentally manipulated nutritional state. After re-introducing mothers to their brood, a range of maternal behaviours were quantified. We found that earwig mothers groomed their offspring significantly more after exposure to chemical extract from high-food brood in comparison with mothers exposed to extract from low-food brood, which in turn displayed significantly more aggressive behaviour. Furthermore, we manipulated offspring individual nutritional condition within the brood to evaluate the effect of offspring state on the within-brood food distribution. Within broods, poorly fed individuals received significantly more food than well-fed individuals, probably due to scramble competition. These results show that earwig nymphs express multi-component condition-dependent signals and behaviours differentially affecting maternal care provisioned to the brood and the distribution of care within brood

Structure elucidation of nanogram quantities of unknown designer drugs based on phenylalkylamine derivates by ion trap multiple mass spectrometry

Multiple mass spectra (MS1 to MS6) of 55 phenylalkylamine derivatives were recorded with ion-trap mass spectrometry employing electrospray (ESI) and atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI). Fragmentation patterns were studied in detail and a generally applicable scheme was established for elucidation of the structures of phenylalkylamine derivatives. HPLC combined with ion-trap multiple mass spectrometry was used to identify the structure of reaction by-products in ecstasy samples from the "black” market. Low nanogram amounts were sufficient for on-line HPLC-MS n structure elucidation of unknown

Kin-selected siblicide and cannibalism in the European earwig

Aggression levels among individuals can severely increase under high density or shortage of crucial resources, sometimes resulting in individuals killing conspecifics. This is not uncommon in family groups of diverse taxa, where the dependent offspring compete for the limited resources provided by their parents. Killing a nest mate can relax the level of competition, and cannibalism provides a direct nutritional benefit. However, nest-mate killing bears the risk of reducing indirect fitness if the victim is related (i.e., siblicide), imposing selection on kin-recognition abilities. Based on this hypothesis, we predicted that first instar juveniles (nymphs) of the European earwig (Forficula auricularia) kill and cannibalize unrelated nest mates earlier and more often than related nest mates and that cannibalism has a direct nutritional benefit in terms of survival. We tested these predictions experimentally by establishing related and unrelated pairs of nymphs and recorded survival, aggregation behavior, and cannibalistic outcomes in the absence of alternative food sources. In order to obtain expected survival probabilities of victims and survivors in the absence of any interaction, we simulated virtual nymph pairs based on survival data of singly held control individuals. As predicted, victims lived for less time and survivor for longer than expected from the simulated survival distributions, demonstrating nest-mate killing and cannibalism. Furthermore, unrelated individuals were killed significantly earlier and were more often cannibalized than related individuals. The survival patterns of victims and survivors were quantitatively consistent with the expectations of Hamilton's rule. Our study shows that earwig nymphs recognize kin and adjust their nest-mate killing and cannibalistic behavior as predicted under the hypothesis of kin-selected siblicide and cannibalis

Does AFLP Diversity Reflect Consanguinity Within Meadow Fescue Breeding Material?

Cultivars of perennial grass species are usually synthetics with a limited number of constituent parental clones, prone to inbreeding depression. Plant breeders aim at a balance between intensity of selection and maintenance of genetic diversity when making their choice of parent clones in an intuitive way, aided by fragmentary pedigree information. Molecular markers offer new opportunities for assessing genetic diversity among selected plants. The objective of the investigation presented here is to check if the genetic distance as measured by AFLP polymorphisms reflects consanguinity among Festuca pratensis individuals from our breeding programme

On the structure of the retina in man

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