Abstract

Although the process by which galaxies obtain the gas needed for star-formation is amongst the most fundamental controlling the formation of baryonic structure in the universe, there is very little in the way of empirical evidence with which to constrain theoretical models, with in particular, the postulated environmental dependencies remaining largely unconstrained. Using the galaxy and mass assembly spectroscopic and multi-wavelength photometric survey, in combination with a new, purpose built method for constructing samples of purely morphologically selected spiral galaxies, and a radiative transfer modelling approach applicable to large samples of galaxies we have performed a definitive quantitative study of the effect of the group environment on the star-formation rates of spiral galaxies in the local universe. This study has obtained two main results questioning the validity of the standard paradigm of gas-fuelling, which I will present and discuss.