A study of a translocated population of Anguis Fragilis in Cornwall, UK

A population of slow-worms were monitored throughout August and September 2010 at a roadside location near Dobwalls, Cornwall. The population was released onto the site in 2009 and one of the aims of the study was to determine if the population was surviving in their new habitat. Follow up work post-translocation is rarely done in the UK. The vegetation was predominantly saplings, young shrubs and rough grassland and black roof felt was used as refugia to attract the slow-worms. The site was visited two to three times a week and the temperature, weather, invertebrates present, sex or age and location of the slow-worms were recorded. The results found that the site was abundant in invertebrate species that slow-worms could feed on and it was unlikely their distribution was determined by the food source alone. It was also apparent that the site contained smaller microhabitats of damp, sunny and overgrown areas that influenced the slow-worms‟ location. It is possible that some individuals had migrated up to 267m from the release point in the one year of being on site. It is a complex combination of many environmental factors that determine where the slow-worms are on site. The weather conditions including the temperature are very important factors in observing the slow-worms under the refuges. The optimum conditions were 15°C with at least 40% cloud cover and a moderate breeze. When it was too cold or hot very few were recorded. The distribution of the population in terms of gender and age was heavily weighted towards females and juveniles. This could be due to the fact that they tend to bask and utilise the refuges more or because there were more females in the population but probably due to both. A number of recommendations have been made including an extended monitoring area and a more detailed food source survey

Discrete Razumikhin-type technique and stability of the Euler-Maruyama method to stochastic functional differential equations

A discrete stochastic Razumikhin-type theorem is established to investigate whether the Euler--Maruyama (EM) scheme can reproduce the moment exponential stability of exact solutions of stochastic functional differential equations (SFDEs). In addition, the Chebyshev inequality and the Borel-Cantelli lemma are applied to show the almost sure stability of the EM approximate solutions of SFDEs. To show our idea clearly, these results are used to discuss stability of numerical solutions of two classes of special SFDEs, including stochastic delay differential equations (SDDEs) with variable delay and stochastically perturbed equations

The GAPS Experiment to Search for Dark Matter using Low-energy Antimatter

The GAPS experiment is designed to carry out a sensitive dark matter search by measuring low-energy cosmic ray antideuterons and antiprotons. GAPS will provide a new avenue to access a wide range of dark matter models and masses that is complementary to direct detection techniques, collider experiments and other indirect detection techniques. Well-motivated theories beyond the Standard Model contain viable dark matter candidates which could lead to a detectable signal of antideuterons resulting from the annihilation or decay of dark matter particles. The dark matter contribution to the antideuteron flux is believed to be especially large at low energies (E < 1 GeV), where the predicted flux from conventional astrophysical sources (i.e. from secondary interactions of cosmic rays) is very low. The GAPS low-energy antiproton search will provide stringent constraints on less than 10 GeV dark matter, will provide the best limits on primordial black hole evaporation on Galactic length scales, and will explore new discovery space in cosmic ray physics. Unlike other antimatter search experiments such as BESS and AMS that use magnetic spectrometers, GAPS detects antideuterons and antiprotons using an exotic atom technique. This technique, and its unique event topology, will give GAPS a nearly background-free detection capability that is critical in a rare-event search. GAPS is designed to carry out its science program using long-duration balloon flights in Antarctica. A prototype instrument was successfully flown from Taiki, Japan in 2012. GAPS has now been approved by NASA to proceed towards the full science instrument, with the possibility of a first long-duration balloon flight in late 2020. Here we motivate low-energy cosmic ray antimatter searches and discuss the current status of the GAPS experiment and the design of the payload.Comment: 8 pags, 3 figures, Proc. 35th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2017), Busan, Kore

Origin of endemic species in a moderately isolated ancient lake: The case of a snakehead in Inle Lake, Myanmar

Inle Lake is an ancient lake in Myanmar, which is an important area with unique and diverse fauna. Its ichthyofauna is believed to have formed non-radiatively, but the historical processes are poorly understood. To elucidate the mechanisms that shape species diversity in this moderately isolated biogeographical ‘island’, this study focused on a typical endemic fish of Inle Lake, Channa harcourtbutleri (Channidae, Anabantiformes), with its widely distributed sister species, C. limbata, and estimated the historical distribution and diversification processes of the endemic fish based on genome-wide polymorphism (MIG-seq) and mitochondrial DNA data. Channa harcourtbutleri contained two genetically and morphologically distinct groups inhabiting Inle Lake and the surrounding rivers respectively. These two groups were genetically the closest to each other; however, the riverine group showed some similarity to the closely related species, C. limbata from Southeast Asia. The mtDNA haplotypes of the endemic species were not monophyletic; most of the riverine group had haplotypes identical or close to those of C. limbata from the upper Irrawaddy and Salween rivers. The time tree suggested that C. harcourtbutleri diverged from C. limbata in the early Pleistocene and then experienced secondary contact with C. limbata in the late Pleistocene. Genetic and morphological differentiation within C. harcourtbutleri suggests that local adaptation to different environments has played an important role for the coexistence of its two forms with some reproductive isolation. Further, the results highlight the importance of multiple colonization and allopatric speciation in shaping biodiversity in the long-term, moderately isolated environments

Status of cosmic-ray antideuteron searches

The precise measurement of cosmic-ray antiparticles serves as important means for identifying the nature of dark matter. Recent years showed that identifying the nature of dark matter with cosmic-ray positrons and higher energy antiprotons is difficult, and has lead to a significantly increased interest in cosmic-ray antideuteron searches. Antideuterons may also be generated in dark matter annihilations or decays, offering a potential breakthrough in unexplored phase space for dark matter. Low-energy antideuterons are an important approach because the flux from dark matter interactions exceeds the background flux by more than two orders of magnitude in the low-energy range for a wide variety of models. This review is based on the "dbar14 - dedicated cosmic-ray antideuteron workshop", which brought together theorists and experimentalists in the field to discuss the current status, perspectives, and challenges for cosmic-ray antideuteron searches and discusses the motivation for antideuteron searches, the theoretical and experimental uncertainties of antideuteron production and propagation in our Galaxy, as well as give an experimental cosmic-ray antideuteron search status update. This report is a condensed summary of the article "Review of the theoretical and experimental status of dark matter identification with cosmic-ray antideuteron" (arXiv:1505.07785).Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, ICRC 2015 proceeding