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Schmikas t1_ithe0m5 wrote

Reply to comment by pmmbok in Formation of Namibia’s fairy circles isn’t due to termites. Plants are "ecosystem engineers" that survive by forming optimal geometric patterns. by marketrent

This is fascinating! Thank you for bringing this to my attention.

For others who are interested in reading more, here’s the link to the original paper that is summarised neatly in this National Geographic article.

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LynnDuck4 t1_ithn8oq wrote

Huh, I read the Abstract and then the nat geo article. Based on what nat geo said, it sounds like she checked each plant each week for 28 days. I wonder how long they keep that information, since it says bees can only keep a discovery for a few days.

If I were this researcher, I'd consider testing 2 plants (or three if she had an extra 28) every single day. Each day is a new set of plants that had stopped curling up, and checking to see if they "remember" that they don't need to curl up. Idk, I don't have full access to the paper, so maybe the researcher did do that, or plans to.

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