Using the spectroscopic catalogue of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 10 , we have explored the abundance of satellites around a sample of 254 massive ( 10 ^ { 11 } < M _ { \star } < 2 \times 10 ^ { 11 } M _ { \sun } ) local ( z < 0.025 ) galaxies .
We have divided our sample into four morphological groups ( E , S0 , Sa , Sb/c ) .
We find that the number of satellites with M _ { \star } \gtrsim 10 ^ { 9 } M _ { \sun } and R < 300 kpc depends drastically on the morphology of the central galaxy .
The average number of satellites per galaxy host ( N _ { Sat } / N _ { Host } ) down to a mass ratio of 1:100 is : 4.5 \pm 0.3 for E hosts , 2.6 \pm 0.2 for S0 , 1.5 \pm 0.1 for Sa and 1.2 \pm 0.2 for Sb/c .
The amount of stellar mass enclosed by the satellites around massive E-type galaxies is a factor of 2 , 4 and 5 larger than the mass in the satellites of S0 , Sa and Sb/c-types , respectively .
If these satellites would eventually infall into the host galaxies , for all the morphological types , the merger channel will be largely dominated by satellites with a mass ratio satellite-host \mu > 0.1 .
The fact that massive elliptical galaxies have a significant larger number of satellites than massive spirals could point out that elliptical galaxies inhabit heavier dark matter haloes than equally massive galaxies with later morphological types .
If this hypothesis is correct , the dark matter haloes of late-type spiral galaxies are a factor of \sim 2-3 more efficient on producing galaxies with the same stellar mass than those dark matter haloes of early-type galaxies .