Curly coat represents an extraordinary type of coat in horses, particularly seen in American Bashkir Curly Horses and Missouri Foxtrotters. In some horses with curly coat, a hypotrichosis of variable extent was observed, making the phenotype appear more complex. In our study, we aimed at investigating the genetic background of curly coat with and without hypotrichosis using high density bead chip genotype and next generation sequencing data. Genome-wide association analysis detected significant signals (p = 1.412 × 10−05–1.102 × 10−08) on horse chromosome 11 at 22–35 Mb. In this significantly associated region, six missense variants were filtered out from whole-genome sequencing data of three curly coated horses of which two variants within KRT25 and SP6 could explain all hair phenotypes. Horses heterozygous or homozygous only for KRT25 variant showed curly coat and hypotrichosis, whereas horses with SP6 variant only, exhibited curly coat without hypotrichosis. Horses with mutant alleles in both variants developed curly hair and hypotrichosis. Thus, mutant KRT25 allele is masking SP6 allele effect, indicative for epistasis of KRT25 variant over SP6 variant. In summary, genetic variants in two different genes, KRT25 and SP6, are responsible for curly hair. All horses with KRT25 variant are additionally hypotrichotic due to the KRT25 epistatic effect on SP6.

AbstractMost of the research on the effects of direct democracy on minority rights is empirically limited to the direct effects of direct democracy. This article takes the issue a step further and examines both direct and indirect effects by investigating the rights of religious minorities in Switzerland. The analysis provides two main insights: all direct effects are negative and can be observed when the rights of out-groups like Islamic minorities are at stake. Second, indirect effects on the parliamentary process can be observed, too: parliaments make laws more restrictive toward Islamic minorities if they fear a popular vote. However, they develop strategies to enforce their liberal interests, as shown by the fact that extensions of the rights of religious minorities are passed in total revisions.

This article contributes to the study of democratic problems related to governance networks, by focusing on the role of the media. Two main rivalling hypotheses are examined. The functionalist hypothesis postulates that the media accurately inform the public about policy actors and their responsibilities, independent of these actors’ institutional status. The media-bias hypothesis postulates an attention bias towards elected policy actors, resulting in reduced public visibility of non-elected policy actors. The analysis uses standardised data on decision-making processes and newspaper content relating to public transport and economic promotion policies in eight western European metropolitan areas. Findings are that the actor mix of governance networks is quite accurately reflected in newspaper reporting. However, elected actors are more often presented as responsible for policies (‘over-responsibilised’), and they are more often blamed for policy failures than other actors (‘over-blamed’). The extent of this media bias depends on commercial pressure on media outlets. We also show that variations of this general pattern are linked to different types of media systems found across the cases under scrutiny.

No abstract

No abstract