ArticleScience advances2021
Fairy circles reveal the resilience of self-organized salt marshes.
Article in Science advances, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- Self-organized hummock-hollow patterns redistribute salinity stress in coastal meadows.Science advances · 2026Article
- Climatic Legacies Drive Spatial Aggregation of Plants in Drylands.Global change biology · 2026Article
- The development of high-density aggregation spatial distribution patterns under high stress.Frontiers in plant science · 2026Article
- Environmental stress and plant-plant interactions jointly shape intertidal cordgrass traits across broad spatial scales.Frontiers in plant science · 2026Article
- Causes and consequences of disordered hyperuniformity in global drylands.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- How spatiotemporal dynamics can enhance ecosystem resilience.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Can spatial self-organization inhibit evolutionary adaptation?Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2025Article
- Review
- 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
- The global biogeography and environmental drivers of fairy circles.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Self-organized mud cracking amplifies the resilience of an iconic "Red Beach" salt marsh.Science advances · 2023Article
- Self-organized sulfide-driven traveling pulses shape seagrass meadows.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Phase-separation physics underlies new theory for the resilience of patchy ecosystems.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Foraging behaviours lead to spatiotemporal self-similar dynamics in grazing ecosystems.Ecology letters · 2022Article
- Scientific foundations for an ecosystem goal, milestones and indicators for the post-2020 global biodiversity framework.Nature ecology & evolution · 2021Review
- Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Spatial patterning is a fascinating theme in both theoretical and experimental ecology. It reveals resilience and stability to withstand external disturbances and environmental stresses. However, existing studies mainly focus on well-developed persistent patterns rather than transient patterns in self-organizing ecosystems. Here, combining models and experimental evidence, we show that transient fairy circle patterns in intertidal salt marshes can both infer the underlying ecological mechanisms and provide a measure of resilience. The models based on sulfide accumulation and nutrient depletion mechanisms reproduced the field-observed fairy circles, providing a generalized perspective on the emergence of transient patterns in salt marsh ecosystems. Field experiments showed that nitrogen fertilization mitigates depletion stress and shifts plant growth from negative to positive in the center of patches. Hence, nutrient depletion plays an overriding role, as only this process can explain the concentric rings. Our findings imply that the emergence of transient patterns can identify the ecological processes underlying pattern formation and the factors determining the ecological resilience of salt marsh ecosystems.
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Registered trials
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