Stellar Abundances in Dwarf Irregular Galaxies

Dwarf irregular galaxies appear to have undergone very slow chemical evolution since they have low nebular abundances, but have had ongoing star formation over the past 15 Gyr. They are too distant for red giant abundance analyses to examine the details of their chemical evolution, however the isolated, bright blue supergiants do allow us to determine their present-day iron abundances to compare with both stellar and nebularα-element results. The [α/Fe] ratios in four Local Group dwarf irregular galaxies (NGC 6822, WLM, Sextans A, and GR 8) all appear to have solar ratios regardless of the differences in their metallicities and star formation histories. Surprisingly, WLM’s stellar metallicity is three times higher than the nebular oxygen abundance. We compare the [α/Fe] ratios in the dwarf irregulars to those from recent analyses of red giant branch stars in dwarf spheroidal galaxies, and also to damped Lyα systems, and discuss these in the context of model predictions.