Factors affecting the diet of Peregrine Falcon in Italy

The diet of top predators can provide useful information on phenology and abundance of their prey. The cosmopolitan and specialist Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus) is an ideal model to assess whether food changes have occurred in the long-term. In this contribution, we reviewed all available literature on Peregrine Falcon diet in Italy which contained 11 detailed datasets useful for our review, and also included analysis of pellets, collected at three breeding sites of Sicily during 2014 and 2015. These data allowed us to shed light on the Peregrine Falcon’s diet over the last forty years (1978-2015). We calculated the numerical and biomass percentage of the resident and not-resident prey proportions, as well as the trophic diversity of diet in each site using the Simpson diversity index. To describe the Peregrine Falcon food niche and investigate whether year, habitat and latitude effects existed in its diet, we used a 2nd-degree factorial ANOVA. Over 1,550 preys, 110 bird species accounted for 98.58% of frequency and 99.79% of biomass. Modelling showed a year effect, with the quota and biomass of resident prey species increasing across the forty years of the study period, in a way complementary to the decrease of the quota and biomass of not-resident prey species. Conversely, habitat and latitude predicted significantly trophic diversity that was larger in rural than urban habitats, and at northern than southern latitudes. The strong numerical and biomass decrease of not-resident preys in the trophic niche of Peregrine Falcon in Italy could be related to the negative population trends of both migratory and summer-breeder farmland species. Actually the bulk of prey of the Peregrine Falcon in Italy is formed by a restricted group of resident Corvidae and Columbidae, which have remarkably increased in the last years. This could trigger more dependence on resident prey in the long term, making the Peregrine Falcons more vulnerable to control programs or eradication of specific prey populations or exposing them locally to high risk of infections (chlamydiosis, avian trichomiasis) transferred by feral species

Multiple interannual records of young-of-the-year identify an important area for the protection of the shortfin mako, Isurus oxyrinchus

The shortfin mako (Isurus oxyrinchus) is the second most fishery-exploited pelagic shark in the Mediterranean Sea, thus its conservation status is a cause for concern. Despite the species has been listed in fishery and trade regulations to hinder its population decline, the lack of knowledge on its distribution patterns and habitats essential for its persistence still hampers the implementation of sound conservation actions. Combining data from local expert knowledge, opportunistic catch records, and Baited Remote Underwater Videos, we show evidence of the interannual presence of young-of-the-year (YOY) I. oxyrinchus in the Pelagie Archipelago (Central Mediterranean Sea). A total of twenty-one individuals ranging 71–92.5 cm FL were incidentally caught (on average 2.3 YOY/1000 hooks) or documented on BRUVS in July and August over three consecutive years. These data coupled with questionnaires administered to longline fishers identify one specific area used by YOY in the summer months. Our study presents the most abundant record of YOY shortfin makos in the Mediterranean Sea within such a restricted time and limited area providing important information for improving the protection of this critically endangered species

Commissioning of the MEG II tracker system

The MEG experiment at the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) represents the state of the art in the search for the charged Lepton Flavour Violating (cLFV) $\mu^+ \rightarrow e^+ \gamma$ decay. With the phase 1, MEG set the new world best upper limit on the \mbox{BR}(\mu^+ \rightarrow e^+ \gamma) < 4.2 \times 10^{-13} (90% C.L.). With the phase 2, MEG II, the experiment aims at reaching a sensitivity enhancement of about one order of magnitude compared to the previous MEG result. The new Cylindrical Drift CHamber (CDCH) is a key detector for MEG II. CDCH is a low-mass single volume detector with high granularity: 9 layers of 192 drift cells, few mm wide, defined by $\sim 12000$ wires in a stereo configuration for longitudinal hit localization. The filling gas mixture is Helium:Isobutane (90:10). The total radiation length is $1.5 \times 10^{-3}$ \mbox{X}_0, thus minimizing the Multiple Coulomb Scattering (MCS) contribution and allowing for a single-hit resolution $< 120$ $\mu$m and an angular and momentum resolutions of 6 mrad and 90 keV/c respectively. This article presents the CDCH commissioning activities at PSI after the wiring phase at INFN Lecce and the assembly phase at INFN Pisa. The endcaps preparation, HV tests and conditioning of the chamber are described, aiming at reaching the final stable working point. The integration into the MEG II experimental apparatus is described, in view of the first data taking with cosmic rays and $\mu^+$ beam during the 2018 and 2019 engineering runs. The first gas gain results are also shown. A full engineering run with all the upgraded detectors and the complete DAQ electronics is expected to start in 2020, followed by three years of physics data taking.Comment: 10 pages, 12 figures, 1 table, proceeding at INSTR'20 conference, accepted for publication in JINS

Single-hit resolution measurement with MEG II drift chamber prototypes

Drift chambers operated with helium-based gas mixtures represent a common solution for tracking charged particles keeping the material budget in the sensitive volume to a minimum. The drawback of this solution is the worsening of the spatial resolution due to primary ionisation fluctuations, which is a limiting factor for high granularity drift chambers like the MEG II tracker. We report on the measurements performed on three different prototypes of the MEG II drift chamber aimed at determining the achievable single-hit resolution. The prototypes were operated with helium/isobutane gas mixtures and exposed to cosmic rays, electron beams and radioactive sources. Direct measurements of the single hit resolution performed with an external tracker returned a value of 110 $\mu$m, consistent with the values obtained with indirect measurements performed with the other prototypes.Comment: 18 pages, 18 figure

Design, status and perspective of the Mu2e crystal calorimeter

The Mu2e experiment at Fermilab will search for the charged lepton flavor violating process of neutrino-less $\mu \to e$ coherent conversion in the field of an aluminum nucleus. Mu2e will reach a single event sensitivity of about $2.5\cdot 10^{-17}$ that corresponds to four orders of magnitude improvements with respect to the current best limit. The detector system consists of a straw tube tracker and a crystal calorimeter made of undoped CsI coupled with Silicon Photomultipliers. The calorimeter was designed to be operable in a harsh environment where about 10 krad/year will be delivered in the hottest region and work in presence of 1 T magnetic field. The calorimeter role is to perform $\mu$/e separation to suppress cosmic muons mimiking the signal, while providing a high level trigger and a seeding the track search in the tracker. In this paper we present the calorimeter design and the latest R$\&$D results.Comment: 4 pages, conference proceeding for a presentation held at TIPP'2017. To be published on Springer Proceedings in Physic

Quality Assurance on a custom SiPMs array for the Mu2e experiment

The Mu2e experiment at Fermilab will search for the coherent $\mu \to e$ conversion on aluminum atoms. The detector system consists of a straw tube tracker and a crystal calorimeter. A pre-production of 150 Silicon Photomultiplier arrays for the Mu2e calorimeter has been procured. A detailed quality assur- ance has been carried out on each SiPM for the determination of its own operation voltage, gain, dark current and PDE. The measurement of the mean-time-to-failure for a small random sample of the pro-production group has been also completed as well as the determination of the dark current increase as a function of the ioninizing and non-ioninizing dose.Comment: 4 pages, 10 figures, conference proceeding for NSS-MIC 201

The Mu2e undoped CsI crystal calorimeter

The Mu2e experiment at Fermilab will search for Charged Lepton Flavor Violating conversion of a muon to an electron in an atomic field. The Mu2e detector is composed of a tracker, an electromagnetic calorimeter and an external system, surrounding the solenoid, to veto cosmic rays. The calorimeter plays an important role to provide: a) excellent particle identification capabilities; b) a fast trigger filter; c) an easier tracker track reconstruction. Two disks, located downstream of the tracker, contain 674 pure CsI crystals each. Each crystal is read out by two arrays of UV-extended SiPMs. The choice of the crystals and SiPMs has been finalized after a thorough test campaign. A first small scale prototype consisting of 51 crystals and 102 SiPM arrays has been exposed to an electron beam at the BTF (Beam Test Facility) in Frascati. Although the readout electronics were not the final, results show that the current design is able to meet the timing and energy resolution required by the Mu2e experiment.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figures, proceedings of the "Calorimetry for the high energy frontier (CHEF17)" conference, 2-6 October 2017, Lyon, Franc

Ageing test of the ATLAS RPCs at X5-GIF

An ageing test of three ATLAS production RPC stations is in course at X5-GIF, the CERN irradiation facility. The chamber efficiencies are monitored using cosmic rays triggered by a scintillator hodoscope. Higher statistics measurements are made when the X5 muon beam is available. We report here the measurements of the efficiency versus operating voltage at different source intensities, up to a maximum counting rate of about 700Hz/cm^2. We describe the performance of the chambers during the test up to an overall ageing of 4 ATLAS equivalent years corresponding to an integrated charge of 0.12C/cm^2, including a safety factor of 5.Comment: 4 pages. Presented at the VII Workshop on Resistive Plate Chambers and Related Detectors; Clermont-Ferrand October 20th-22nd, 200