Termite mounds can increase the robustness of dryland ecosystems to climatic change

Bonachela, Juan A.; Pringle, Robert M.; Sheffer, Efrat; Coverdale, Tyler C.; Guyton, Jennifer A.; Caylor, K. K.; Levin, Simon A.; Tarnita, Corina E.

doi:10.1126/science.1261487

Cited by 224 publications

(209 citation statements)

References 77 publications

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“…To test whether termites or ants play a role (18,33,34) in the formation of Australian FCs, we studied their presence in the gaps in the field. The majority of FCs lacked any signs of termite or ant activity and the proportion of gaps with termite signs (either clear mounds, low pavement mounds, or foraging holes in flat surface) were very variable, with 47%, 60%, and only 33% in the three field sites C1, L1, and L2, respectively.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discovery of fairy circles in Australia supports self-organization theory

Getzin

Yizhaq

Bell

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

171

215

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Vegetation gap patterns in arid grasslands, such as the "fairy circles" of Namibia, are one of nature's greatest mysteries and subject to a lively debate on their origin. They are characterized by small-scale hexagonal ordering of circular bare-soil gaps that persists uniformly in the landscape scale to form a homogeneous distribution. Pattern-formation theory predicts that such highly ordered gap patterns should be found also in other water-limited systems across the globe, even if the mechanisms of their formation are different. Here we report that so far unknown fairy circles with the same spatial structure exist 10,000 km away from Namibia in the remote outback of Australia. Combining fieldwork, remote sensing, spatial pattern analysis, and process-based mathematical modeling, we demonstrate that these patterns emerge by self-organization, with no correlation with termite activity; the driving mechanism is a positive biomasswater feedback associated with water runoff and biomass-dependent infiltration rates. The remarkable match between the patterns of Australian and Namibian fairy circles and model results indicate that both patterns emerge from a nonuniform stationary instability, supporting a central universality principle of pattern-formation theory. Applied to the context of dryland vegetation, this principle predicts that different systems that go through the same instability type will show similar vegetation patterns even if the feedback mechanisms and resulting soil-water distributions are different, as we indeed found by comparing the Australian and the Namibian fairy-circle ecosystems. These results suggest that biomass-water feedbacks and resultant vegetation gap patterns are likely more common in remote drylands than is currently known.drylands | spatial pattern | Triodia grass | Turing instability | vegetation gap P attern-formation theory (1) and the influence of Alan Turing's work on understanding biological morphogenesis (2) are increasingly recognized in environmental sciences (3). Vegetation patterns resulting from self-organization occur frequently in waterlimited ecosystems and, similar to Turing patterns, show pattern morphologies that change from gaps to stripes (labyrinths) to spots with decreasing plant-available moisture (4-6). The patterns may emerge on completely flat and homogeneous substrate and are induced by positive feedbacks between local vegetation growth and water transport toward the growth location.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discovery of fairy circles in Australia supports self-organization theory

Getzin

Yizhaq

Bell

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

171

215

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Although termites are considered as heterogeneity drivers (sensu Jouquet et al, 2015c) and termite mounds as hot-spots or patches with specific physical, chemical and biological properties at the ecosystem scale (e.g., Konaté et al, 1999;Choosai et al, 2009;Muvengwi et al, 2013;Seymour et al, 2014;Bonachela et al, 2015), very limited data are available on the heterogeneity in soil properties within termite mounds (Erens et al, 2015). Further, to our knowledge, no information is available on the evolution of termite mound properties over time.…”

Section: Influence Of Termite Mound Sizementioning

confidence: 97%

Influence of soil type on the properties of termite mound nests in Southern India

Jouquet

Guilleux

Shanbhag

et al. 2015

Applied Soil Ecology

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“…Biological complexity at different spatial scales, driven by a multitude of behavioral, population-level, or ecosystem-level processes, is a defining characteristic of natural ecosystems (22,(34)(35)(36). A recent theoretical study highlighted that the interplay between two different self-organization processes created spatial patterns at two different scales in mussel beds, which proved a crucial factor in defining mussel bed persistence (22).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Behavioral self-organization underlies the resilience of a coastal ecosystem

Paoli

Heide

Berg

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Self-organized spatial patterns occur in many terrestrial, aquatic, and marine ecosystems. Theoretical models and observational studies suggest self-organization, the formation of patterns due to ecological interactions, is critical for enhanced ecosystem resilience. However, experimental tests of this cross-ecosystem theory are lacking. In this study, we experimentally test the hypothesis that self-organized pattern formation improves the persistence of mussel beds (Mytilus edulis) on intertidal flats. In natural beds, mussels generate selforganized patterns at two different spatial scales: regularly spaced clusters of mussels at centimeter scale driven by behavioral aggregation and large-scale, regularly spaced bands at meter scale driven by ecological feedback mechanisms. To test for the relative importance of these two spatial scales of self-organization on mussel bed persistence, we conducted field manipulations in which we factorially constructed small-scale and/or large-scale patterns. Our results revealed that both forms of self-organization enhanced the persistence of the constructed mussel beds in comparison to nonorganized beds. Small-scale, behaviorally driven cluster patterns were found to be crucial for persistence, and thus resistance to wave disturbance, whereas large-scale, self-organized patterns facilitated reformation of small-scale patterns if mussels were dislodged. This study provides experimental evidence that self-organization can be paramount to enhancing ecosystem persistence. We conclude that ecosystems with self-organized spatial patterns are likely to benefit greatly from conservation and restoration actions that use the emergent effects of self-organization to increase ecosystem resistance to disturbance.self-organization | resilience | multiscale patterns | ecosystems | mussels

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Termite mounds can increase the robustness of dryland ecosystems to climatic change

Cited by 224 publications

References 77 publications

Discovery of fairy circles in Australia supports self-organization theory

Discovery of fairy circles in Australia supports self-organization theory

Influence of soil type on the properties of termite mound nests in Southern India

Behavioral self-organization underlies the resilience of a coastal ecosystem

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