238 research outputs found

    Déprise et reboisement de terrains agricoles dans le Gard

    Get PDF
    International audienc

    Morphometric variations at an ecological scale: Seasonal and local variations in feral and commensal house mice

    Get PDF
    The time scales of evolutionary and ecological studies tend to converge, as evidenced by studies that have shown contemporary evolution can occur as fast as ecological processes. This opens new questions regarding variation of characters usually considered to change mostly along an evolutionary time scale, such as morphometric traits, including osteological and dental features such as mandibles and teeth of mammals. Using two-dimensional geometric morphometric approach, we questioned whether such features can change on a seasonal and local basis, in relation to the ecological dynamics of the populations. Our model comprised populations of house mice (Mus musculus domesticus) in two contrasted situations in mainland Western Europe: a feral population vs. two close commensal populations. Mitochondrial DNA (D-loop) provided insight into the diversity and dynamics of the populations. The feral population appeared as genetically highly diversified, suggesting a possible functioning as a sink in relation to the surrounding commensal populations. In contrast, commensal populations were highly homogeneous from a genetic point of view, suggesting each population to be isolated. This triggered morphological differentiation between neighboring farms. Seasonal differences in morphometric traits (mandible size and shape and molar size and shape) were significant in both settings, although seasonal variations were greater in the feral than in the commensal population. Seasonal variations in molar size and shape could be attributed to differential wear in young or overwintered populations. Differences in mandible shape could be related to aging in overwintered animals, but also possibly to differing growth conditions depending on the season. The impact of these ecological processes on morphometric traits is moderate compared to divergence over a large biogeographic scale, but their significance nevertheless underlines that even morphological characters may trace populations dynamics at small scale in time and space

    Global patterns of β-diversity along the phylogenetic time-scale : the role of climate and plate tectonics

    Get PDF
    Aim: We aimed to assess the relative influence of the historical and contemporary processes determining global patterns of current \u3b2-diversity. Specifically, we quantified the relative effects of contemporary climate and historical plate tectonics on \u3b2-diversity at different phylogenetic scales. Location: Global. Time Period: Contemporaneous. Major taxa studied: Mammals and birds. Methods: We analysed the current \u3b2-diversity patterns of birds and mammal assemblages at sequential depths in the phylogeny, that is, from the tips to deeper branches. This was done by slicing bird and mammal phylogenetic trees into 66 time slices of 1 Ma (from 0 to 65 Ma) and recording the branches within each slice. Using global distribution data, we defined the branches\u2019 geographical distribution as the union of the corresponding downstream species distributions. For each time slice, we (a) computed pairwise \u3b2-diversity across all the grid cells for the whole world and (b) estimated the correlation between this \u3b2-diversity matrix and contemporary climatic and geographical distances, and past geological distances, a proxy for plate tectonics. Results: Contemporary climate best explained the \u3b2-diversity of shallow branches (i.e., species). For mammals, the geographical isolation of landmasses generated by plate tectonics best explained the \u3b2-diversity of deeper branches, whereas the effect of past isolation was weaker for birds. Main conclusions: Our study shows that the relative influence of contemporary climate and plate tectonics on the \u3b2-diversity of bird and mammal assemblages varies along the phylogenetic time-scale. Our phylogenetic time-scale approach is general and flexible enough to be applied to a broad spectrum of study systems and spatial scales

    Magnetic fields in supernova remnants and pulsar-wind nebulae

    Full text link
    We review the observations of supernova remnants (SNRs) and pulsar-wind nebulae (PWNe) that give information on the strength and orientation of magnetic fields. Radio polarimetry gives the degree of order of magnetic fields, and the orientation of the ordered component. Many young shell supernova remnants show evidence for synchrotron X-ray emission. The spatial analysis of this emission suggests that magnetic fields are amplified by one to two orders of magnitude in strong shocks. Detection of several remnants in TeV gamma rays implies a lower limit on the magnetic-field strength (or a measurement, if the emission process is inverse-Compton upscattering of cosmic microwave background photons). Upper limits to GeV emission similarly provide lower limits on magnetic-field strengths. In the historical shell remnants, lower limits on B range from 25 to 1000 microGauss. Two remnants show variability of synchrotron X-ray emission with a timescale of years. If this timescale is the electron-acceleration or radiative loss timescale, magnetic fields of order 1 mG are also implied. In pulsar-wind nebulae, equipartition arguments and dynamical modeling can be used to infer magnetic-field strengths anywhere from about 5 microGauss to 1 mG. Polarized fractions are considerably higher than in SNRs, ranging to 50 or 60% in some cases; magnetic-field geometries often suggest a toroidal structure around the pulsar, but this is not universal. Viewing-angle effects undoubtedly play a role. MHD models of radio emission in shell SNRs show that different orientations of upstream magnetic field, and different assumptions about electron acceleration, predict different radio morphology. In the remnant of SN 1006, such comparisons imply a magnetic-field orientation connecting the bright limbs, with a non-negligible gradient of its strength across the remnant.Comment: 20 pages, 24 figures; to be published in SpSciRev. Minor wording change in Abstrac

    Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

    Get PDF
    A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results

    Jet size dependence of single jet suppression in lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s(NN)) = 2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

    Get PDF
    Measurements of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions at the LHC provide direct sensitivity to the physics of jet quenching. In a sample of lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.76 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of approximately 7 inverse microbarns, ATLAS has measured jets with a calorimeter over the pseudorapidity interval |eta| < 2.1 and over the transverse momentum range 38 < pT < 210 GeV. Jets were reconstructed using the anti-kt algorithm with values for the distance parameter that determines the nominal jet radius of R = 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5. The centrality dependence of the jet yield is characterized by the jet "central-to-peripheral ratio," Rcp. Jet production is found to be suppressed by approximately a factor of two in the 10% most central collisions relative to peripheral collisions. Rcp varies smoothly with centrality as characterized by the number of participating nucleons. The observed suppression is only weakly dependent on jet radius and transverse momentum. These results provide the first direct measurement of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions and complement previous measurements of dijet transverse energy imbalance at the LHC.Comment: 15 pages plus author list (30 pages total), 8 figures, 2 tables, submitted to Physics Letters B. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/HION-2011-02

    Star clusters near and far; tracing star formation across cosmic time

    Get PDF
    © 2020 Springer-Verlag. The final publication is available at Springer via https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-020-00690-x.Star clusters are fundamental units of stellar feedback and unique tracers of their host galactic properties. In this review, we will first focus on their constituents, i.e.\ detailed insight into their stellar populations and their surrounding ionised, warm, neutral, and molecular gas. We, then, move beyond the Local Group to review star cluster populations at various evolutionary stages, and in diverse galactic environmental conditions accessible in the local Universe. At high redshift, where conditions for cluster formation and evolution are more extreme, we are only able to observe the integrated light of a handful of objects that we believe will become globular clusters. We therefore discuss how numerical and analytical methods, informed by the observed properties of cluster populations in the local Universe, are used to develop sophisticated simulations potentially capable of disentangling the genetic map of galaxy formation and assembly that is carried by globular cluster populations.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

    Search for strong gravity in multijet final states produced in pp collisions at √s=13 TeV using the ATLAS detector at the LHC

    Get PDF
    A search is conducted for new physics in multijet final states using 3.6 inverse femtobarns of data from proton-proton collisions at √s = 13TeV taken at the CERN Large Hadron Collider with the ATLAS detector. Events are selected containing at least three jets with scalar sum of jet transverse momenta (HT) greater than 1TeV. No excess is seen at large HT and limits are presented on new physics: models which produce final states containing at least three jets and having cross sections larger than 1.6 fb with HT > 5.8 TeV are excluded. Limits are also given in terms of new physics models of strong gravity that hypothesize additional space-time dimensions
    corecore