Interspecific Competition of a New Invasive Mosquito, \u3ci\u3eCulex coronator\u3c/i\u3e, and Two Container Mosquitoes, \u3ci\u3eAedes albopictus\u3c/i\u3e and \u3ci\u3eCx. quinquefasciatus\u3c/i\u3e (Diptera: Culicidae), Across Different Detritus Environments

The mosquito Culex coronator (Dyar and Knab) (Diptera: Culicidae) has undergone rapid range expansion in the United States since 2003, with its historical distribution in the southwest expanding eastward to the Atlantic coast. Although Cx. coronator nominally use small natural aquatic habitats for development, the use of containers (e.g., tires) makes it potentially important as container invasive. To determine the potential ecological effects of Cx. coronator on resident container species, we conducted a laboratory experiment to assess its competitive ability with two common tire-inhabiting species, Aedes albopictus (Skuse) and Culex quinquefasciatus (Say) (Diptera: Culicidae). Larvae were reared under a factorial design with each species alone and in combination (Cx. coronator + Ae. albopictus, Cx. coronator + Cx. quinquefasciatus) across three different resource environments (leaf detritus only, animal detritus only, animal + leaf). Mosquito performance (survival, adult male and female mass, and development time) was measured for each species across treatments. Female Cx. coronator developed slowest when grown with Ae. albopictus, or when grown with leaves only regardless of species combinations; similar patterns emerged for males although species effects were restricted to mass. Few differences were evident in performance for male and female Cx. coronator across detritus environments when grown with Cx. quinquefasciatus. Cx. quinquefasciatus did not vary in mass or development time in the presence of Cx. coronator compared with when grown alone. Ae. albopictus female mass was 15% lower in the presence of Cx. coronator. Survival of Cx. coronator was highest in animal and leaf detritus containers, although survival was generally lower when larvae were grown with Ae. albopictus. These findings suggest that the performance of Cx. coronator is similar to that of Cx. quinquefasciatus but it suffers in the presence of Ae. albopictus under some resource environments

Magnetic inflation and stellar mass. III. revised parameters for the component stars of NSVS 07394765

We perform a new analysis of the M-dwarf–M-dwarf eclipsing binary system NSVS 07394765 in order to investigate the reported hyper-inflated radius of one of the component stars. Our analysis is based on archival photometry from the Wide Angle Search for Planets, new photometry from the 32 cm Command Module Observatory telescope in Arizona and the 70 cm telescope at Thacher Observatory in California, and new high-resolution infrared spectra obtained with the Immersion Grating Infrared Spectrograph on the Discovery Channel Telescope. The masses and radii we measure for each component star disagree with previously reported measurements. We show that both stars are early M-type main-sequence stars without evidence for youth or hyper-inflation ( = - ☉ M M + 1 0.661 0.036 0.008 , = - ☉ M M + 2 0.608 0.028 0.003 , = - ☉ + R1 0.599 0.019 R 0.032 , = - ☉ + R2 0.625 0.027 R 0.012 ), and we update the orbital period and eclipse ephemerides for the system. We suggest that the likely cause of the initial hyper-inflated result is the use of moderate-resolution spectroscopy for precise radial velocity measurements.Published versio

Weakly collisional Landau damping and three-dimensional Bernstein-Greene-Kruskal modes: New results on old problems

Landau damping and Bernstein-Greene-Kruskal (BGK) modes are among the most fundamental concepts in plasma physics. While the former describes the surprising damping of linear plasma waves in a collisionless plasma, the latter describes exact undamped nonlinear solutions of the Vlasov equation. There does exist a relationship between the two: Landau damping can be described as the phase-mixing of undamped eigenmodes, the so-called Case-Van Kampen modes, which can be viewed as BGK modes in the linear limit. While these concepts have been around for a long time, unexpected new results are still being discovered. For Landau damping, we show that the textbook picture of phase-mixing is altered profoundly in the presence of collision. In particular, the continuous spectrum of Case-Van Kampen modes is eliminated and replaced by a discrete spectrum, even in the limit of zero collision. Furthermore, we show that these discrete eigenmodes form a complete set of solutions. Landau-damped solutions are then recovered as true eigenmodes (which they are not in the collisionless theory). For BGK modes, our interest is motivated by recent discoveries of electrostatic solitary waves in magnetospheric plasmas. While one-dimensional BGK theory is quite mature, there appear to be no exact three-dimensional solutions in the literature (except for the limiting case when the magnetic field is sufficiently strong so that one can apply the guiding-center approximation). We show, in fact, that two- and three-dimensional solutions that depend only on energy do not exist. However, if solutions depend on both energy and angular momentum, we can construct exact three-dimensional solutions for the unmagnetized case, and two-dimensional solutions for the case with a finite magnetic field. The latter are shown to be exact, fully electromagnetic solutions of the steady-state Vlasov-Poisson-Amp\`ere system

Global X-ray properties of the O and B stars in Carina

The key empirical property of the X-ray emission from O stars is a strong correlation between the bolometric and X-ray luminosities. In the framework of the Chandra Carina Complex Project, 129 O and B stars have been detected as X-ray sources; 78 of those, all with spectral type earlier than B3, have enough counts for at least a rough X-ray spectral characterization. This leads to an estimate of the Lx/Lbol ratio for an exceptional number of 60 O stars belonging to the same region and triples the number of Carina massive stars studied spectroscopically in X-rays. The derived log(Lx/Lbol) is -7.26 for single objects, with a dispersion of only 0.21dex. Using the properties of hot massive stars listed in the literature, we compare the X-ray luminosities of different types of objects. In the case of O stars, the Lx/Lbol ratios are similar for bright and faint objects, as well as for stars of different luminosity classes or spectral types. Binaries appear only slightly harder and slightly more luminous in X-rays than single objects; the differences are not formally significant (at the 1% level), except for the Lx/Lbol ratio in the medium (1.0--2.5keV) energy band. Weak-wind objects have similar X-ray luminosities but they display slightly softer spectra compared to "normal" O stars with the same bolometric luminosity. Discarding three overluminous objects, we find a very shallow trend of harder emission in brighter objects. The properties of the few B stars bright enough to yield some spectral information appear to be different overall (constant X-ray luminosities, harder spectra), hinting that another mechanism for producing X-rays, besides wind shocks, might be at work. However, it must be stressed that the earliest and X-ray brightest amongst these few detected objects are similar to the latest O stars, suggesting a possibly smooth transition between the two processes.Comment: 30 pages, 9 figures. Accepted for the ApJS Special Issue on the Chandra Carina Complex Project (CCCP), scheduled for publication in May 2011. All 16 CCCP Special Issue papers are available at http://cochise.astro.psu.edu/Carina_public/special_issue.html through 2011 at leas