Australian fairy circles first to be found outside Africa
Discovery adds to mystery of how polka-dot patterns in grasslands form
By Susan Milius
Beyond the small mining town of Newman in Western Australia lie the first fairy circles scientists have described outside of Africa.
These patches of bare soil dot outback grasslands in almost regular polka-dot patterns, just like the puzzling circle landscapes known from Namibia, says ecologist Stephan Getzin of the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research-UFZ in Leipzig, Germany. He and his colleagues publish the first scientific description of Australia’s fairy circles online March 14 in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences. The team proposes that the oddities arise from life-and-death struggles between plants.