Bizarre Natural Phenomena Vol.31 - Spots On The Desert (Fairy Circles)

Welcome to another mysteriously beautiful phenomenon! Nature is full of patterns, even in the arid desert...

(Image source - author, Stephan Getzin (via Beavis729) - license)

Although you could be tempted to say,

(Meme generated via makeameme.org image database) 

The case is a lot simpler. These beautiful and totally symmetrical crop circles can be found in the deserts of Namibia and Australia and they are the result of plants!

Plants?! Do they gather up in circles for some secret summoning or something?

Kind of. Studies have concluded that in order to survive the arid desert environment, plants create these circles to use as water and nutrients deposits (think of them like a circular food storage). Initially it was believed that fighting plant colonies would create the circles like boundaries to separate colonies from each other. But the story is that strong plants fight off weaker ones with their roots and take advantage of the water gathered in the round, bare parts of soil. 

At first, scientists wanted to check if those patterns were random or would show certain repetitive characteristics. After analyzing aerial images, they concluded that the circles showed consistency. They conducted computer simulations and the results only came to certify the above theory. 

(Image source: commons.wikimedia.org)

What about ants?

Another study in 2013 (Norbert Jürgens, University of Hamburg), came to claim that it was the termites of the Namibian deserts that carved underground to chop off the roots of plants. The ants wanted to create a water storage below the bare patches of land, where they could benefit from the humidity of the underground. The plants gathered around the sites in their quest for food and water, taking advantage of the hard-working ants.

But this theory could not be supported in the Australian desert, where no termites were found. In 2016 Bronwyn Bell (environmental engineer, Australia) and Stephan Getzin (Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research), published a study that could not relate plant patterns and termite activity. So, the hypothesis, although it sounded legit, should not be the generating cause. It was rather the ants benefiting from the plant formations and setting their colonies in the abundant (compared to the rest of the desert) in food round sites. In the Australian case an importat factor could be the different soil (Australian soil has a clay surface, more hard and dry that leads water all the way right under the plants, in contrast with Namibian soil that is loamy and preserves humidity below the circles).

A mathematician, Corina Tarnita, who studied and modeled ecological systems, came to support that in the Namibia's case it could be both species behaviors that lead to the circles. The model she and her team provided could rationalize the hypothesis that termite colonization in combination with plant organization work to give us those beautiful patterns. 

(Image source - author, Bernard DUPONT - license)

Any dangerous gases?

Another, not so popular, theory that I found was the possibility of hydrocarbon deposits that gave off gases (methane or butane). Those gases would reduce the oxygen in the soil leading roots to die and creating the circles.

To sum up, the main idea is that according to each place's special features, there might be different mechanisms that work (probably together or separately) to provide the same outcome. There might be more fairy circles sites on the planet awaiting to be found. The mystery and excitement of new discoveries never ends around here!

(Image source - author, Thorsten Becker, Beavis729, Beavis729 - license)

References

atlasobscura.com_1
atlasobscura.com_2
iflscience.com
livescience.com
wikipedia.org

Thank you for stopping by and giving this post a read. I hope you enjoyed it! If it got your curiosity-radar on, you can check some of the previous articles on this series:
26 - Psychedelic Swamp
27 - Supercell Storms
28 - Northern Lights
29 - Light Pillars
30 - Earthquake Lights

If you please, you can also visit my blog and check out my short stories along with plenty of educational posts! 

Special thanks and mentions go to:

Until my next post,
Steem on and keep smiling, people!