They found that either hypothesis could generate the fairy circle features.
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This large fairy circle features a hardened top-soil layer that's preventing the growth of grass.
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Despite the team's attempt to solve the mystery, it seems the fairy circle scuffle flutters on.
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The new study suggests that termites and plants may be jointly responsible for forming fairy circle landscapes in Namibia.
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Some fairy circle experts firmly placed in either team termite or team plant had strong doubts about the paper's findings, while others welcomed it.
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A fairy circle consists of a region of grassland that's completely devoid of grass and bordered by a bushy circumference of unusually robust grass growth.
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The vegetation ring that forms the outer boundary of the Fairy Circle results from plants taking advantage of that increased moisture, spreading their plastic-like roots underneath the bare patch.
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Other recent work has considered interacting combinations of both animal- and vegetation-induced patterning effects as a potential unifying theoretical explanation for the fairy circle phenomenon.
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Australian environmental engineer, Bronwyn Bell alongside Dr Stephan Getzin from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research released a paper in 2016 providing new insight into possible cause of the fairy circle formations. Examples can be found at (Namibia) and (Western Australia).
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Juergens found evidence that the sand termite, Psammotermes allocerus, generates a local ecosystem that profits from and promotes the creation of the fairy circle. The sand termite was found in 80-100% of the circles, in 100% of newly formed circles, and was the only insect to live across the range of the phenomenon. Sand termites create the fairy circle by consuming vegetation and burrowing in the soil to create the ring. The barren circle allows water to percolate down through sandy soil and accumulate underground, allowing the soil to remain moist even under the driest conditions.
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A fairy ring (possibly Chlorophyllum molybdites) on a suburban lawn in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia A fairy ring, also known as fairy circle, elf circle, elf ring or pixie ring, is a naturally occurring ring or arc of mushrooms. They are found mainly in forested areas, but also appear in grasslands or rangelands. Fairy rings are detectable by sporocarps (fungal spore pods) in rings or arcs, as well as by a necrotic zone (dead grass), or a ring of dark green grass. Fungus mycelium is present in the ring or arc underneath.
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Welsh folk belief is that mountain sheep that eat the grass of a fairy ring flourish, and that crops sown from such a place will prove more bountiful than those from normal land. A folk belief recorded in the Athenian Oracle claims that a house built on a fairy circle will bring prosperity to its inhabitants. Likewise, a legend from Pont y Wern says that in the 13th or 14th century, the inhabitants of the town of Corwrion watched fairies dancing in a ring around a glow worm every Sunday after church at a place called Pen y Bonc. They even joined the sprites in their revels.
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"Plucked from the Fairy Circle" A man saves his friend from the grip of a fairy ring A great deal of folklore surrounds fairy rings. Their names in European languages often allude to supernatural origins; they are known as ronds de sorcières ("witches' circles") in French, and Hexenringe ("witches' rings") in German. In German tradition, fairy rings were thought to mark the site of witches' dancing on Walpurgis Night, and Dutch superstition claimed that the circles show where the Devil set his milk churn. In Tyrol, folklore attributed fairy rings to the fiery tails of flying dragons; once a dragon had created such a circle, nothing but toadstools could grow there for seven years.
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A single fairy circle, Namibia Fairy circles in the Marienflusstal area in Namibia In Africa, the circles occur in a band lying about inland, and extending southward from Angola for some down to the Northwestern Cape province of South Africa. It is largely a remote and inhospitable region, much of it over a hundred kilometres from the nearest village. The circles have been recognised and informally remarked on for many years, first being mentioned in technical literature in the 1920s and intermittently thereafter with the intensity of study increasing during the final quarter of the 20th century. In 2014 fairy circles were first discovered outside of Africa, 15 kilometres outside of the town Newman in the Pilbara of Western Australia.
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Banding appears because the protective boundary layer created by the wind-most trees is eventually disrupted by turbulence, exposing more distant downwind trees to freezing damage once again. When there is no directional resource flow across the landscape, spatial patterns may still appear in various regular and irregular forms along the rainfall gradient, including, in particular, hexagonal gap patterns at relatively high rainfall rates, stripe patterns at intermediate rates, and hexagonal spot patterns at low rates. The presence of a clear directionality to some important factor (such as a freezing wind or surface flow down a slope) favors the formation of stripes (bands), oriented perpendicular to the flow direction, in wider ranges of rainfall rates. Several mathematical models have been published that reproduce a wide variety of patterned landscapes, including: semi-arid “tiger bush”, hexagonal “fairy- circle” gap patterns, woody-herbaceous landscapes, salt marshes, fog dependent desert vegetation, mires and fens.
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