Evidence map›Paper›PMID 23952298›Full record

ReviewThe New phytologist2014

On the importance of balancing selection in plants.

Lynda F Delph, John K Kelly

Abstract readReview
In one paragraph

Review in The New phytologist, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 72 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
72citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

72 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Article
  3. Review
  4. Article
  5. A century of theories of balancing selection.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026
    Review
  6. Article
  7. Article
  8. Population Genomic Survey ofAnimals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025
    Article
  9. Article
  10. A trans-species cytoplasmic polymorphism is associated with seed shape and aridity across multiple species of sunflowers.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
    Article
  11. Article
  12. Article
  13. Article
  14. Article
  15. Article
  16. Article
  17. Article
  18. Article
  19. Article
  20. Article

12 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Lynda F DelphDepartment of Biology, Indiana University, 1001 East Third Street, Bloomington, IN, 47405, USA.
John K KellyDepartment of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Kansas, 1200 Sunnyside Avenue, Lawrence, KS, 66045, USA.

Funding

Genomic Analysis of Complex Trait Variation in MimulusR01GM073990 · NIGMS · UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS LAWRENCE · PI KELLY, JOHN K · 2006 to 2015
$2.6M
NIGMS NIH HHS NIH GM073990-02NIGMS NIH HHS R01 GM073990
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

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.

Indexed as

AllelesEcosystemGenotypePhenotypePolymorphism, GeneticSelection, GeneticHeterozygoteMagnoliopsidaModels, Geneticnegative frequency-dependent selectionnuclear-cytoplasmic gynodioecyoverdominancespatial heterogeneitytrans-specific polymorphism

Identifiers

PMID23952298
PMCPMC3886833

What OpenQuestion holds

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Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.