Fairy rings surprise viewers and stir up controversy among experts. For decades, scientists have hotly debated the origins of the strange polka dots found in the barren landscape of the Namib Desert, which stretches from Angola to northern South Africa. Some researchers also say that they occur in places such as: australian outback.
There is something new to discuss here. How often are fairy circles discovered around the world?
A study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences based on satellite images raises the possibility that fairy circles exist. fairly widespreadoccurring at up to 263 sites in 15 countries across three continents.
Fernando Maestre, an ecologist at the university, said: “We discovered that there are fairy circle sites in many other places we didn’t know existed, because most of the research on this topic , it has been implemented in just two countries: Namibia and Australia.” The author of the study is from Alicante, Spain.
Other researchers working on fairy circles say it remains to be seen whether the newly identified circular bare spots are true fairy circles until field research is conducted.
“Different types of bare land exist in all arid regions of the world, and they are caused by different processes,” says Norbert, an emeritus ecologist at the University of Hamburg who was not involved in the study. Jurgens said.
Until this study was conducted, Dr. Maestre and his colleagues were not part of the sometimes fractious fraternity of fairy circle researchers. When Emilio Guillard, a data scientist at the University of Alicante and one of the study’s authors, discovered something strange on Google Earth, they were drawn into the mystery. It had a pattern that looked like a fairy ring in Niger. He wondered if they also existed in other dryland habitats.
To find out, researchers trained a pattern recognition model using images of known fairy rings from Namibia and Australia. They applied the model to entire satellite images of his 575,000 2.5-acre plots of dryland habitat around the world.
Drylands make up 41 percent of the Earth’s surface, but the researchers’ models determined that only a small portion, about 193 square miles, could be home to fairy circles. The researchers looked at satellite images and manually confirmed that the fairy ring-like pattern was occurring almost everywhere the model identified, from Kazakhstan to Madagascar.
Based on their findings, they created a profile of the types of habitats where fairy ring-like patterns are most likely to occur. It is a hot, dry place with low nitrogen, sandy soils, and annual rainfall of 4 to 12 inches. .
Statistical tests confirmed that “the pattern we found is exactly the same as what people have found in Namibia and Australia,” Dr. Maestre said.
Dr Maestre said he and his colleagues approached the study fully aware that fairy rings were a “hotly debated topic”. For this reason, they chose to be conservative in describing their discovery as a “fairy ring-like vegetation pattern.”
“We’re not trying to fight anyone,” Dr. Maestre said.
Nevertheless, this new discovery provoked a strong reaction.
“Unfortunately, this study dilutes the term ‘fairy circles’ and ignores the definition of a fairy circle in the process,” said ecologist Stefan Getzin of Germany’s University of Göttingen. Ta.
2021, Dr. Getzin and colleagues The real fairy ring claimed It occurs in a grid-like pattern with “very strong” order.
None of the newly identified fairy ring gaps fit this exact pattern, Dr. Getzin said.
Florida State University biologist Walter Tinkel, who was not involved in the study, agreed with Getzin. Although the authors of the new paper “did find that regions of arid climate and sandy soil had many rounded or circular gaps,” the patterns “do not truly meet the criteria for fairy circles.” ” he said.
Dr. Maestre responded that Dr. Goetzin’s definition “is not supported by the entire scientific community that collaborates with the Fairy Circle” and “does not undermine our findings in any way.”
Michael Kramer, an ecophysiologist at the University of Cape Town who was not involved in the study, said the lack of a standard definition of fairy circles was a problem across the field.
“Unfortunately, the only guardians of the term ‘fairy ring’ are self-appointed people,” Dr. Kramer says. “Achieving agreement on the naming of fairy circles would likely require the establishment of a Fairy Circle Nomenclature Convention, but that seems unlikely.”
Whatever the newly discovered gap turns out to be, it leaves scientists with much work to do, said Hej Isak, an environmental physicist at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University who was not involved in the study. He said he was giving the job.
“Currently, we need to investigate 263 new locations,” he said. “What’s so interesting and exciting in science is solving the puzzles of nature.”