Related papers: Intermittent precipitation and spatial Allee effec…
The scarcity of water characterising drylands forces vegetation to adopt appropriate survival strategies. Some of these generate water-vegetation feedback mechanisms that can lead to spatial self-organisation of vegetation, as it has been…
Several theoretical models predict that spatial patterning increases ecosystem resilience. However, these predictions rely on simplifying assumptions, such as assuming isotropic and infinitely large ecosystems, and empirical evidence…
Understanding the causes and effects of spatial vegetation patterns is a fundamental problem in ecology, especially because these can be used as early predictors of catastrophic shifts such as desertification processes. Empirical studies of…
A demographic Allee effect occurs when individual fitness, at low densities, increases with population density. Coupled with environmental fluctuations in demographic rates, Allee effects can have subtle effects on population persistence…
Dry-land ecosystem has turned into a matter of grave concern, due to growing threat of land degradation and bioproductivity-loss. Self-organized vegetation patterns are a remarkable characteristic of these ecosystems; apart from being…
Water availability is a major environmental driver affecting riparian and wetland vegetation. The interaction between water table fluctuations and vegetation in a stochastic environment contributes to the complexity of the dynamics of these…
Mutualisms are key for structuring ecological communities, but they are sensitive to environmental change and fluctuations in population size. Consequently, how mutualisms achieve stability remains an open question in ecological theory.…
Many species are unsustainable at small population densities (Allee Effect), i.e., below a threshold named Allee threshold, the population decreases instead of growing. In a closed local population, environmental fluctuations always lead to…
Patterns of vegetation are a characteristic feature of many semi-arid regions. The limiting resource in these ecosystems is water, which is added to the system through short and intense rainfall events that cause a pulse of biological…
Understanding how species persist under interacting stressors is a central challenge in ecology. We develop a spatially explicit reaction-diffusion framework to investigate competing species in landscapes shaped by climate variability,…
Due to climate change, overgrazing, and deforestation, arid ecosystems are vulnerable to desertification and land degradation. As aridity increases, vegetation cover loses spatial homogeneity and self-organizes into heterogeneous vegetation…
We develop a model for investigating the impact of rainstorm variability on the formation of banded vegetation patterns in dryland ecosystems. Water input, during rare rainstorms, is modeled as an instantaneous kick to the soil water. The…
The Allee effect describes a decline in population fitness at low densities, potentially leading to extinction. In predator-prey systems, an emergent Allee effect can arise due to interactions such as density-dependent maturation rates and…
The response of dynamical systems to varying conditions and disturbances is a fundamental aspect of their analysis. In spatially extended systems, particularly in pattern-forming systems, there are many possible responses, including…
Vegetation in semi-arid environments self-organizes into striking spatial patterns -- bands, spots, labyrinths, and gaps -- with characteristic wavelengths on the order of tens to hundreds of meters. Existing reaction-diffusion models…
The savanna biome is characterised by a continuous vegetation cover, comprised of herbaceous and woody plants. The coexistence of species in arid savannas, where water availability is the main limiting resource for plant growth, provides an…
In this work, we present and analyze a general framework for vegetation dynamics in arid and semi-arid ecosystems in which non-local interactions are purely competitive. The generality of the formulation enables a systematic search for…
In many drylands around the globe, vegetation self-organizes into regular spatial patterns in response to aridity stress. We consider the regularly-spaced vegetation bands, on gentle hill-slopes, that survive low rainfall conditions by…
Vegetation patterns are abundant in arid and semiarid ecosystems, but how they form remains unclear. One of the most extended theories lies in the existence of scale-dependent feedbacks (SDF) in plant-to-plant and plant-water interactions.…
Patterned vegetation is a characteristic feature of many dryland ecosystems. While plant densities on the ecosystem-wide scale are typically low, a spatial self-organisation principle leads to the occurrence of alternating patches of high…