Strong interaction between plants induces circular barren patches: fairy circles

TL;DR

This paper presents a non-local ecological model explaining the formation of fairy circles in arid landscapes as a result of strong plant interactions and competition, linking vegetation dynamics to the observed circular barren patches.

Contribution

It introduces a simple, model-independent non-local interaction framework that explains fairy circle formation and size variation with aridity, supported by theoretical and reaction-diffusion models.

Findings

Fairy circles result from strong non-local plant interactions.

The size of fairy circles increases with aridity levels.

The proposed mechanism applies across different modeling approaches.

Abstract

Vast landscapes extending from southern Angola, Namibia, and South Africa exhibit localised barren patches of vegetation called fairy circles. They consist of isolated or randomly distributed circular areas devoid of any vegetation. They are surrounded by fringes of tall grasses and are embedded in a sparse grassland on sandy soils. When the aridity increases, the size of the fairy circles increases and can reach diameters up to 10m. Although several hypotheses have been proposed, the origin of this phenomenon remains unsolved. We show that a simple non-local model of plant ecology based on realistic assumptions provides a quantitative explanation of this phenomenon. Fairy circles result from strong interaction between interfaces connecting two uniform covers: the uniform grassland and the bare states, and their stabilisation is attributed to the Lorentzian-like non-local coupling that models the competition between plants. The cause of their formation in thus rather inherent to the vegetation dynamics. Our analysis explain how a circular shape and fringes are formed, and how the aridity level influences the size of the fairy circles. In agreement with field observation, these theoretical findings, provide a link between a strong non-local interaction of plants and the formation of stable fairy circles. Finally, we show that the proposed mechanism is model-independent: indeed, it also applies to the reaction-diffusion type of model that emphasises the influence of water transport on the vegetation dynamics.