ArticleNature2017
A theoretical foundation for multi-scale regular vegetation patterns.
Article in Nature, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 40 papers.
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Who cites it
40 citing papers in PubMed.
- Self-organized hummock-hollow patterns redistribute salinity stress in coastal meadows.Science advances · 2026Article
- Numerical bifurcation analysis of turing and symmetry broken patterns of a PDE model for vegetation dynamics.Journal of mathematical biology · 2026Article
- Causes and consequences of disordered hyperuniformity in global drylands.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Eco-Inspired terraform networks emerge from material self-organization.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Spatial and temporal scale-dependent feedbacks govern dynamics of biocrusts in drylands.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Revealing Physical Mechanisms of Spatial Pattern Formation and Switching in Ecosystems via Nonequilibrium Landscape and Flux.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2025Article
- Article
- Reply to: Australian fairy circles and termite linyji are not caused by the same mechanism.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Article
- The primacy of temporal dynamics in driving spatial self-organization of soil iron redox patterns.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Phenotypic plasticity: A missing element in the theory of vegetation pattern formation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Self-organized disordered vegetation patterns with hidden order in arid ecosystems.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Vegetation controls on channel network complexity in coastal wetlands.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Article
- The hidden order of Turing patterns in arid and semi-arid vegetation ecosystems.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Fairy circle tales.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- The global biogeography and environmental drivers of fairy circles.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Evolution at the arid extreme: the influence of climate on sand termite colonies and fairy circles of the Namib Desert.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Earthen mounds (Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- First Peoples' knowledge leads scientists to reveal 'fairy circles' and termite linyji are linked in Australia.Nature ecology & evolution · 2023Article
- Self-organized sulfide-driven traveling pulses shape seagrass meadows.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Self-organized regular vegetation patterns are widespread and thought to mediate ecosystem functions such as productivity and robustness, but the mechanisms underlying their origin and maintenance remain disputed. Particularly controversial are landscapes of overdispersed (evenly spaced) elements, such as North American Mima mounds, Brazilian murundus, South African heuweltjies, and, famously, Namibian fairy circles. Two competing hypotheses are currently debated. On the one hand, models of scale-dependent feedbacks, whereby plants facilitate neighbours while competing with distant individuals, can reproduce various regular patterns identified in satellite imagery. Owing to deep theoretical roots and apparent generality, scale-dependent feedbacks are widely viewed as a unifying and near-universal principle of regular-pattern formation despite scant empirical evidence. On the other hand, many overdispersed vegetation patterns worldwide have been attributed to subterranean ecosystem engineers such as termites, ants, and rodents. Although potentially consistent with territorial competition, this interpretation has been challenged theoretically and empirically and (unlike scale-dependent feedbacks) lacks a unifying dynamical theory, fuelling scepticism about its plausibility and generality. Here we provide a general theoretical foundation for self-organization of social-insect colonies, validated using data from four continents, which demonstrates that intraspecific competition between territorial animals can generate the large-scale hexagonal regularity of these patterns. However, this mechanism is not mutually exclusive with scale-dependent feedbacks. Using Namib Desert fairy circles as a case study, we present field data showing that these landscapes exhibit multi-scale patterning-previously undocumented in this system-that cannot be explained by either mechanism in isolation. These multi-scale patterns and other emergent properties, such as enhanced resistance to and recovery from drought, instead arise from dynamic interactions in our theoretical framework, which couples both mechanisms. The potentially global extent of animal-induced regularity in vegetation-which can modulate other patterning processes in functionally important ways-emphasizes the need to integrate multiple mechanisms of ecological self-organization.
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