187 research outputs found
Does disappearance mean extirpation? The case of right whales off Namibia
Right whales off Namibia were severely depleted by early 19th century whaling,
and rarely featured in modern whaling catches in the 1920s. Aerial surveys of the
Namibian coastline from 1978 and onwards revealed increasing numbers of right
whales, but few cow-calf pairs. Aerial surveys off South Africa since 2009 showed a
major decline in the availability of animals without calves. Twenty individual
matches were made between 94 whales photographed off Namibia/Northern Cape in
2003–2012 and 1,677 photographed off South Africa in 1979–2012. Eight were
adult females that calved in South African waters, but only one was also seen with a
calf off Namibia. Twelve out of 13 individuals off Namibia with distinctive dorsal
pigmentation were first seen as calves off South Africa. These results strongly indicate
connectivity between the two regions, while the presence off Namibia of three
adult females from the South African population in the season in which they are
believed to conceive suggests that there is unlikely to be any genetic differentiation
between the two areas. We conclude that the reappearance of right whales off Namibia
represents range expansion from South Africa rather than the survival of a few
remnants of an originally separate stock.Benguela Environment Fisheries Interaction & Training Programme (BENEFIT), Namibian Coast Conservation and Management Project (NACOMA), and The Namibia Nature Foundation (NNF).Department of Industries (and its successors),
Department of Transport (through the SA National Antarctic Programme), South African
Marine Corporation, World Wide Fund for Nature (SA), The Green Trust, Moby Dick
Rum, Exclusive Touch, International Whaling Commission, the Island Foundation, and
National Research Foundation.http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1748-76922016-07-31hb201
Congruence and diversity of butterfly-host plant associations at higher taxonomic levels
We aggregated data on butterfly-host plant associations from existing sources in order to address the following questions: (1) is there a general correlation between host diversity and butterfly species richness?, (2) has the evolution of host plant use followed consistent patterns across butterfly lineages?, (3) what is the common ancestral host plant for all butterfly lineages? The compilation included 44,148 records from 5,152 butterfly species (28.6% of worldwide species of Papilionoidea) and 1,193 genera (66.3%). The overwhelming majority of butterflies use angiosperms as host plants. Fabales is used by most species (1,007 spp.) from all seven butterfly families and most subfamilies, Poales is the second most frequently used order, but is mostly restricted to two species-rich subfamilies: Hesperiinae (56.5% of all Hesperiidae), and Satyrinae (42.6% of all Nymphalidae). We found a significant and strong correlation between host plant diversity and butterfly species richness. A global test for congruence (Parafit test) was sensitive to uncertainty in the butterfly cladogram, and suggests a mixed system with congruent associations between Papilionidae and magnoliids, Hesperiidae and monocots, and the remaining subfamilies with the eudicots (fabids and malvids), but also numerous random associations. The congruent associations are also recovered as the most probable ancestral states in each node using maximum likelihood methods. The shift from basal groups to eudicots appears to be more likely than the other way around, with the only exception being a Satyrine-clade within the Nymphalidae that feed on monocots. Our analysis contributes to the visualization of the complex pattern of interactions at superfamily level and provides a context to discuss the timing of changes in host plant utilization that might have promoted diversification in some butterfly lineages
Resource dispersion, territory size and group size of black-backed jackals on a desert coast
We studied the relationship between resource—
food patch—richness and dispersion on group and territory
size of black-backed jackals Canis mesomelas in the Namib
Desert. Along beaches where food patches are mostly small,
widely separated jackal group sizes are small, and territories
are narrow and extremely elongated. Where food patches
are rich, fairly clumped and also heterogeneous, group sizes
are large and territory sizes small. At a superabundant and
highly clumped food source—a large seal rookery—group
sizes are large, and territoriality is absent. Although jackals
feed at the coast and den nearby, individuals move linearly
far inland along well-defined footpaths. The marked climatic
gradient from the cold coast inland—a drop in wind speed
and rise in effective temperature Te – and use of particular
paths by different groups—strongly suggests that these
movements are for thermoregulatory reasons only.Universities of Stellenbosch and Pretoria and the National Research Foundationhttp://link.springer.com/journal/13364hb2014mn201
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Use of tissue equivalent proportional counters to characterize radiation quality on the space shuttle
Tissue equivalent proportional counters (TEPC) are essentially cavity ionization chambers operating at low pressure and with gas gain. A small, battery powered, TEPC spectrometer, which records lineal energy spectra at one minute intervals, has been used on several space shuttle missions. The data it has collected clearly show the South Atlantic anomaly and indicate a mean quality factor somewhat higher than expected. An improved type of instrument has been developed with sufficient memory to record spectra at 10 second intervals, and with increased resolution for low LET events. This type of instrument will be used on most future space shuttle flights and in some international experiments
Daily Activity Patterns of Two Co-Occurring Tropical Satyrine Butterflies
Adult males and females of many insect species are expected to adjust their daily activity pattern in order to avoid stressful climatic conditions and increase the chances to encounter sexual partners. Using scan sampling methods associated with focal individual observations it was found that two satyrine butterflies of similar size and morphology, Hermeuptychia hermes (Fabricius) (Leptidoptera: Nymphalidae) and Paryphthimoides phronius (Godart), show completely different daily activity patterns on forest edges in southeastern Brazil. Hermeuptychia hermes presents one abundance peak in the morning and another in the late afternoon, while P. phronius abundance peaks in the mid-day, remaining stable until 1700 h. This difference is probably due to the occurrence of territorial behavior in the later species. The beginning of territorial defense by P. phronius males coincided with the time of new-born female activity. However, newly hatched females were not sexually receptive. The afternoon territoriality in male P. phronius may be in part related to mate acquisition. However, why the abundance of H. hermes decreases when the abundance of P. phronius increases is less clear
Bulk viscosity in kaon-condensed color-flavor locked quark matter
Color-flavor locked (CFL) quark matter at high densities is a color
superconductor, which spontaneously breaks baryon number and chiral symmetry.
Its low-energy thermodynamic and transport properties are therefore dominated
by the H (superfluid) boson, and the octet of pseudoscalar pseudo-Goldstone
bosons of which the neutral kaon is the lightest. We study the CFL-K^0 phase,
in which the stress induced by the strange quark mass causes the kaons to
condense, and there is an additional ultra-light "K^0" Goldstone boson arising
from the spontaneous breaking of isospin. We compute the bulk viscosity of
matter in the CFL-K^0 phase, which arises from the beta-equilibration processes
K^0H+H and K^0+HH. We find that the bulk viscosity varies as T^7, unlike
the CFL phase where it is exponentially Boltzmann-suppressed by the kaon's
energy gap. However, in the temperature range of relevance for r-mode damping
in compact stars, the bulk viscosity in the CFL-K^0 phase turns out to be even
smaller than in the uncondensed CFL phase, which already has a bulk viscosity
much smaller than all other known color-superconducting quark phases.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figures, v2: references added; minor rephrasings in the
conclusions; version to appear in J. Phys.
Critical temperature for kaon condensation in color-flavor locked quark matter
We study the behavior of Goldstone bosons in color-flavor-locked (CFL) quark
matter at nonzero temperature. Chiral symmetry breaking in this phase of cold
and dense matter gives rise to pseudo-Goldstone bosons, the lightest of these
being the charged and neutral kaons K^+ and K^0. At zero temperature,
Bose-Einstein condensation of the kaons occurs. Since all fermions are gapped,
this kaon condensed CFL phase can, for energies below the fermionic energy gap,
be described by an effective theory for the bosonic modes. We use this
effective theory to investigate the melting of the condensate: we determine the
temperature-dependent kaon masses self-consistently using the two-particle
irreducible effective action, and we compute the transition temperature for
Bose-Einstein condensation. Our results are important for studies of transport
properties of the kaon condensed CFL phase, such as bulk viscosity.Comment: 24 pages, 8 figures, v2: new section about effect of electric
neutrality on critical temperature added; references added; version to appear
in J.Phys.
Bulk viscosity in 2SC quark matter
The bulk viscosity of three-flavor color-superconducting quark matter
originating from the nonleptonic process u+s u+d is computed. It is assumed
that up and down quarks form Cooper pairs while the strange quark remains
unpaired (2SC phase). A general derivation of the rate of strangeness
production is presented, involving contributions from a multitude of different
subprocesses, including subprocesses that involve different numbers of gapped
quarks as well as creation and annihilation of particles in the condensate. The
rate is then used to compute the bulk viscosity as a function of the
temperature, for an external oscillation frequency typical of a compact star
r-mode. We find that, for temperatures far below the critical temperature T_c
for 2SC pairing, the bulk viscosity of color-superconducting quark matter is
suppressed relative to that of unpaired quark matter, but for T >~ 10^(-3) T_c
the color-superconducting quark matter has a higher bulk viscosity. This is
potentially relevant for the suppression of r-mode instabilities early in the
life of a compact star.Comment: 18 pages + appendices (28 pages total), 8 figures; v3: corrected
numerical error in the plots; 2SC bulk viscosity is now larger than unpaired
bulk viscosity in a wider temperature rang
Bulk viscosity in a cold CFL superfluid
We compute one of the bulk viscosity coefficients of cold CFL quark matter in
the temperature regime where the contribution of mesons, quarks and gluons to
transport phenomena is Boltzmann suppressed. In that regime dissipation occurs
due to collisions of superfluid phonons, the Goldstone modes associated to the
spontaneous breaking of baryon symmetry. We first review the hydrodynamics of
relativistic superfluids, and remind that there are at least three bulk
viscosity coefficients in these systems. We then compute the bulk viscosity
coefficient associated to the normal fluid component of the superfluid. In our
analysis we use Son's effective field theory for the superfluid phonon, amended
to include scale breaking effects proportional to the square of the strange
quark mass m_s. We compute the bulk viscosity at leading order in the scale
breaking parameter, and find that it is dominated by collinear splitting and
joining processes. The resulting transport coefficient is zeta=0.011 m_s^4/T,
growing at low temperature T until the phonon fluid description stops making
sense. Our results are relevant to study the rotational properties of a compact
star formed by CFL quark matter.Comment: 19 pages, 2 figures; one reference added, version to be published in
JCA
Ecological succession of a Jurassic shallow-water ichthyosaur fall.
After the discovery of whale fall communities in modern oceans, it has been hypothesized that during the Mesozoic the carcasses of marine reptiles created similar habitats supporting long-lived and specialized animal communities. Here, we report a fully documented ichthyosaur fall community, from a Late Jurassic shelf setting, and reconstruct the ecological succession of its micro- and macrofauna. The early 'mobile-scavenger' and 'enrichment-opportunist' stages were not succeeded by a 'sulphophilic stage' characterized by chemosynthetic molluscs, but instead the bones were colonized by microbial mats that attracted echinoids and other mat-grazing invertebrates. Abundant cemented suspension feeders indicate a well-developed 'reef stage' with prolonged exposure and colonization of the bones prior to final burial, unlike in modern whale falls where organisms such as the ubiquitous bone-eating worm Osedax rapidly destroy the skeleton. Shallow-water ichthyosaur falls thus fulfilled similar ecological roles to shallow whale falls, and did not support specialized chemosynthetic communities
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