Commission on Taxation report 2009.

Taxation--Ireland; Tax expenditures--Ireland; Ireland--Appropriations and expenditures;

Signals of need in a cooperatively breeding mammal with mobile offspring

In many bird species with biparental care for young in the nest, hungry chicks beg repeatedly, and parents adjust their feeding rate to the call rate of young. Repetitive calling also occurs in fledglings and in some mammals where offspring follow provisioners. It is not yet clear whether, in mobile systems with dispersed young where adults cannot compare the vocal behaviour of all young simultaneously, the calls represent a signal of need. We investigated repetitive begging by cooperatively reared meerkat (Suricata suricatta) pups that foraged with the group. Pups produced two types of begging calls: repeat calls over long periods and high- pitched calls mainly confined to feeding events. Food-deprived pups stayed closer to feeders, and begged longer and more intensely by calling at a higher rate. Hungry pups increased both the rate of repeat calls, and the number of high-pitched bouts, but adults increased their food allocation only in relation to the rate of repeat ca lls. Our study indicates that hunger may lead to several changes in vocal behaviour, yet only some of which may be used by adults to assess need

Fine mapping of the Cepaea nemoralis shell colour and mid-banded loci using a high-density linkage map

Molluscs are a highly speciose phylum that exhibits an astonishing array of colours and patterns, yet relatively little progress has been made in identifying the underlying genes that determine phenotypic variation. One prominent example is the land snail Cepaea nemoralis for which classical genetic studies have shown that around nine loci, several physically linked and inherited together as a ‘supergene’, control the shell colour and banding polymorphism. As a first step towards identifying the genes involved, we used whole-genome resequencing of individuals from a laboratory cross to construct a high-density linkage map, and then trait mapping to identify 95% confidence intervals for the chromosomal region that contains the supergene, specifically the colour locus (C), and the unlinked mid-banded locus (U). The linkage map is made up of 215,593 markers, ordered into 22 linkage groups, with one large group making up ~27% of the genome. The C locus was mapped to a ~1.3 cM region on linkage group 11, and the U locus was mapped to a ~0.7 cM region on linkage group 15. The linkage map will serve as an important resource for further evolutionary and population genomic studies of C. nemoralis and related species, as well as the identification of candidate genes within the supergene and for the mid-banding phenotype