Properties of dwarf galaxies from the ALFALFA survey

In optical images, many of the ALFALFA dwarfs are faint and of low surface brightness; only 56% of those within the SDSS footprint have a counterpart in the SDSS spectroscopic survey. A large fraction of the dwarfs have high specific star formation rates (SSFRs), and estimates of their SFRs and M_*_ obtained by SED fitting are systematically smaller than ones derived via standard formulae assuming a constant SFR. The increased dispersion of the SSFR distribution at M_*_<~10^8^M_{sun}_ is driven by a set of dwarf galaxies that have low gas fractions and SSFRs; some of these are dE/dSphs in the Virgo Cluster.

The imposition of an upper HI mass limit yields the selection of a sample with lower gas fractions for their M_*_ than found for the overall ALFALFA population. Many of the ALFALFA dwarfs, particularly the Virgo members, have HI depletion timescales shorter than a Hubble time. An examination of the dwarf galaxies within the full ALFALFA population in the context of global star formation (SF) laws is consistent with the general assumptions that gas-rich galaxies have lower SF efficiencies than do optically selected populations and that HI disks are more extended than stellar ones.