The surprising inefficiency of dwarf satellite quenching

We study dwarf satellite galaxy quenching using observations from the Geha et al. NASA-Sloan Atlas/SDSS catalogue together with I > cold dark matter cosmological simulations to facilitate selection and interpretation. We show that fewer than 30 per cent of dwarfs (M-a 9.5 Gyr, a 'slow starvation' scenario) or that the environmental trigger is not well matched to accretion within the virial volume. We discuss these results in light of the fact that most of the low-mass dwarf satellites in the Local Group are quenched, a seeming contradiction that could point to a characteristic mass scale for satellite quenching.