Myth, busted: Formation of Namibia’s fairy circles isn’t due to termites

Enlarge / Drone image of car driving through the NamibRand Nature Reserve, one of the fairy-circle regions in Namibia.Stephan Getzin

So-called “fairy circles” are bare, reddish-hued circular patches notably found in the Namibian grasslands and northwestern Australia. Scientists have long debated whether these unusual patterns are due to termites or to an ecological version of a self-organizing Turing mechanism. A few years ago, Stephan Getzin of the University of Göttingen found strong evidence for the latter hypothesis in Australia. And now his team has found similar evidence in Namibia, according to a new paper published in the journal Perspectives in Plant Ecology,

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