  In this paper, we present a study of the abundances of Si, Ca, Sc, Ti, V, Cr,
Mn, Co, and Ni in a large set of stars known to harbor giant planets, as well
as in a comparison sample of stars not known to have any planet ary-mass
companions. We have checked for possible chemical differences between planet
hosts and field stars without known planets. Our results show that overall, and
for a given value of [Fe/H], the abundance trends for the planet hosts are
nearly indistinguishable from those of the field stars. In general, the trends
show no discontinuities,and the abundance distributions of stars with giant
planets are high [Fe/H] extensions to the curves traced by the field dwarfs
without planets. The only elements that might present slight differences
between the two groups of stars are V, Mn, and to a lesser extent Ti and Co. We
also use the available data to describe galactic chemical evolution trends for
the elements studied. When comparing the results with former studies, a few
differences emerge for the high [Fe/H] tail of the distribution, a region that
is sampled with unprecedented detail in our analysis.
