Biodiversity shapes tree species aggregations in tropical forests

Spatial patterns of conspecific trees are considered as the consequences of biological interactions and environmental influences. They also reflect species interactions in plant communities. However, biological attributes are often neglected while deliberating the factors shaping species distributions. As rising attentions are paid to spatial patterns of tropical forest trees, we noticed that seven Center of Tropical Forest Sites and four Forest Dynamic Plots in Asia and America have presented analogously high proportions of species with aggregated conspecific individuals coincidently. This phenomenon is distinctive and repudiates fundamental ecology hypotheses which suggested dispersed distributions of conspecific tropical trees due to intensive density and natural enemy pressures in tropical forests. We believe that similar aggregation patterns shared by these tropical forests implies the existence of structuring forces in biogeographical scale instead of habitat heterogeneity in local community scales as scientists have considered. To approach the factors contributing to this cross-continent spatial pattern of trees, we obtained and reviewed ecosystem attributes, including topography, temperature, precipitation, biodiversity, density, and biomass, of these forests. Here we show that the proportions of aggregated species are actually constants independent of any ecosystem attributes regardless the nature of these tropical forests. However, local biodiversity are the major factor determining the number of aggregated species and the aggregation of large individuals of these forests. Aggregation of large trees declines along rising biodiversity, while the numbers of aggregated species increase permanently along lifting biodiversity. We propose a possible equilibrium and saturated status of the tropical forests in accommodating aggregated species. Furthermore, the tight correlations of biodiversity and species aggregation strongly imply the importance of overlooked biological interactions in shaping the spatial patterns in the tropical forests

Phenomenology from a U(1) gauged hidden sector

We consider the phenomenological consequences of a hidden Higgs sector extending the Standard Model (SM), in which the matter content are uncharged under the SM gauge groups. We consider a simple case where the hidden sector is gauged under a U(1) with one Higgs singlet. The only couplings between SM and the hidden sector are through mixings between the neutral gauge bosons of the two respective sectors, and between the Higgs bosons. We find signals testable at the LHC that can reveal the existence and shed light on the nature of such a hidden sector.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures. Talk given at the Lake Louise Winter Institute 2007, Feb. 19-24, Alberta, Canad

Testing Realistic Quark Mass Matrices in the Custodial Randall-Sundrum Model with Flavor Changing Top Decays

We study quark mass matrices in the Randall-Sundrum (RS) model with bulk symmetry $SU(2)_L \times SU(2)_R \times U(1)_{B-L}$. The Yukawa couplings are assumed to be within an order of magnitude of each other, and perturbative. We find that quark mass matrices of the symmetrical form proposed by Koide \textit{et. al.} [Y. Koide, H. Nishiura, K. Matsuda, T. Kikuchi and T. Fukuyama, Phys. Rev. D {\bf 66}, 093006 (2002)] can be accommodated in the RS framework with the assumption of hierarchyless Yukawa couplings, but not the hermitian Fritzsch-type mass matrices. General asymmetrical mass matrices are also found which fit well simultaneously with the quark masses and the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix. Both left-handed (LH) and right-handed (RH) quark rotation matrices are obtained that allow analysis of flavour changing decay of both LH and RH top quarks. At a warped down scale of 1.65 TeV, the total branching ratio of t \ra Z + jets can be as high as $\sim 5 \times 10^{-6}$ for symmetrical mass matrices and $\sim 2 \times 10^{-5}$ for asymmetrical ones. This level of signal is within reach of the LHC.Comment: 30 pages, 6 figures. Reference added, typos corrected, discussions in Sec. IV B expanded. Version conforms to the published versio

A Very Narrow Shadow Extra Z-boson at Colliders

We consider the phenomenological consequences of a hidden Higgs sector extending the Standard Model (SM), in which the ``shadow Higgs'' are uncharged under the SM gauge groups. We consider a simple U(1) model with one Higgs singlet. One mechanism which sheds light on the shadow sector is the mixing between the neutral gauge boson of the SM and the additional U(1) gauge group. The mixing happens through the usual mass-mixing and also kinetic-mixing, and is the only way the ``shadow $Z$'' couples to the SM. We study in detail modifications to the electroweak precision tests (EWPTs) that the presence of such a shadow sector would bring, which in turn provide constraints on the kinetic-mixing parameter, $s_\epsilon$, left free in our model. The shadow $Z$ production rate at the LHC and ILC depends on $s_\epsilon$. We find that observable event rate at both facilities is possible for a reasonable range of $s_\epsilon$ allowed by EWPTs.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures. Note and refs. adde