A global cline in a colour polymorphism suggests a limited contribution of gene flow towards the recovery of a heavily exploited marine mammal

Evaluating how populations are connected by migration is important for understanding species resilience because gene flow can facilitate recovery from demographic declines. We therefore investigated the extent to which migration may have contributed to the global recovery of the Antarctic fur seal (Arctocephalus gazella), a circumpolar distributed marine mammal that was brought to the brink of extinction by the sealing industry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is widely believed that animals emigrating from South Georgia, where a relict population escaped sealing, contributed to the re-establishment of formerly occupied breeding colonies across the geographical range of the species. To investigate this, we interrogated a genetic polymorphism (S291F) in the melanocortin 1 receptor gene, which is responsible for a cream-coloured phenotype that is relatively abundant at South Georgia and which appears to have recently spread to localities as far afield as Marion Island in the sub-Antarctic Indian Ocean. By sequencing a short region of this gene in 1492 pups from eight breeding colonies, we showed that S291F frequency rapidly declines with increasing geographical distance from South Georgia, consistent with locally restricted gene flow from South Georgia mainly to the South Shetland Islands and Bouvetøya. The S291F allele was not detected farther afield, suggesting that although emigrants from South Georgia may have been locally important, they are unlikely to have played a major role in the recovery of geographically more distant populations

Search for R-Parity Violating Decays of Supersymmetric Particles in e+e−e^{+}e^{-} Collisions at Centre-of-Mass Energies near 183 GeV

Searches for pair-production of supersymmetric particles under the assumption that R-parity is violated via a single dominant $LL{\bar E}$, $LQ{\bar D}$ or ${\bar U} {\bar D} {\bar D}$ coupling are performed using the data collected by the \ALEPH\ collaboration at centre-of-mass energies of 181--184~\gev. The observed candidate events in the data are in agreement with the Standard Model expectations. Upper limits on the production cross-sections and lower limits on the masses of charginos, sleptons, squarks and sneutrinos are de rived

Little evidence of inbreeding depression for birth mass, survival and growth in Antarctic fur seal pups

Paijmans A, Berthelsen AL, Nagel R, et al. Little evidence of inbreeding depression for birth mass, survival and growth in Antarctic fur seal pups. Scientific Reports. 2024;14(1): 12610.**Abstract** Inbreeding depression, the loss of offspring fitness due to consanguineous mating, is generally detrimental for individual performance and population viability. We investigated inbreeding effects in a declining population of Antarctic fur seals (Arctocephalus gazella) at Bird Island, South Georgia. Here, localised warming has reduced the availability of the seal’s staple diet, Antarctic krill, leading to a temporal increase in the strength of selection against inbred offspring, which are increasingly failing to recruit into the adult breeding population. However, it remains unclear whether selection operates before or after nutritional independence at weaning. We therefore used microsatellite data from 885 pups and their mothers, and SNP array data from 98 mother–offspring pairs, to quantify the effects of individual and maternal inbreeding on three important neonatal fitness traits: birth mass, survival and growth. We did not find any clear or consistent effects of offspring or maternal inbreeding on any of these traits. This suggests that selection filters inbred individuals out of the population as juveniles during the time window between weaning and recruitment. Our study brings into focus a poorly understood life-history stage and emphasises the importance of understanding the ecology and threats facing juvenile pinnipeds

Search for an invisibly decaying Higgs boson in e+ e- collisions at 189-GeV

The data collected in 1998 by ALEPH at LEP at a centre-of-mass energy of 188.6 GeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 176.2 pb-1, are analysed to search for invisible decays of a Higgs boson produced in the reaction e+e- -> hZ. The number of events found in the data and their properties are in agreement with the Standard Model expectation. This search results in an improved 95% C.L. lower limit on the Higgs boson mass of 95.4 GeV/c2, assuming it decays totally invisibly and for a production cross section equal to that of the Standard Model

Search for charginos and neutralinos in e+e−e^+ e^- collisions at center-of-mass energies near 183-GeV and constraints on the MSSM parameter space

Searches for charginos and neutralinos are performed with the data collected by the ALEPH detector at LEP at centre-of-mass energies near 183 GeV. In these searches, it is assumed that R-parity is conserved and that the lightest neutralino is the LSP. No evidence of a signal is observed in the 57 pb −1 accumulated, which excludes chargino and associated neutralino production up to the kinematic limit over large regions of the MSSM parameter space. Under the assumptions of common gaugino and common sfermion masses at the unification scale, the interplay between the chargino, neutralino and slepton exclusion limits allows a lower bound of 27 GeV/ c2 to be set on the mass of the lightest neutralino. Tighter constraints on the MSSM parameter space are obtained using in addition exclusions in the Higgs sector. Finally, the results are interpreted within the framework of minimal supergravity

Measurement of the W mass in e+ e- collisions at 183-GeV

The mass of the W boson is obtained from reconstructed invariant mass distributions in W-pair events. The sample of W pairs is selected from 57 pb-1 collected with the ALEPH detector in 1997 at a centre-of-mass energy of 183 GeV. The invariant mass distributions of reweighted Monte Carlo events are fitted separately to the experimental distributions in the qq\uafqq\uaf and all l\u3bdqq\uaf channels to give the following W masses:where the theory error represents the possible effects of final state interactions. The combination of these two measurements, including the LEP energy calibration uncertainty, give

Search for invisible Higgs boson decays in e+ e- collisions at center-of-mass energies up to 184-GeV

In a data sample of 78.3 pb^-1 collected in 1996 and 1997 by the ALEPH detector at centre-of-mass energies from 161 to 184 GeV, invisible decays of a Higgs boson have been searched for in the reaction e+e- --> hZ, where the Z can decay into e+e-, mu+mu- or qqbar. No evidence for a signal is found and limits on the production cross section are derived as a function of the Higgs boson mass. These results are combined with those obtained in an update of the analyses of the ALEPH data taken at LEP 1. For a production cross section equal to that of the minimal standard model Higgs boson, masses below 80 GeV/c^2 are excluded at 95% C.L

Observation of an excess in the search for the standard model Higgs boson at ALEPH

A search has been performed for the Standard Model Higgs boson in the data sample collected with the ALEPH detector at LEP, at centre-of-mass energies up to 209GeV. An excess of 3sigma beyond the background expectation is found, consistent with the production of the Higgs boson with a mass near 114GeV/c2. Much of this excess is seen in the four-jet analyses, where three high purity events are selected.Comment: 16 pages, 13 figure