Collaborative Research: Causes and consequences of regular spatial patterning in foundation species: theoretical development and experimental tests in an African savanna

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New satellite imagery has revealed that many natural ecological systems form surprisingly uniform patterns. This project will advance our understanding about how these patterns form and how they affect resources such as water and nutrients and the abundance and distribution of plants and animals. Research will combine experimental field studies in tropical savanna in Kenya with mathematical modeling to investigate the causes and consequences of the regular pattern of large mounds formed over wide areas by soil-dwelling termites. Researchers will investigate the physical and biological mechanisms that space termite colonies, and how the mounded landscape shapes food webs and determines overall productivity and stability of the system. This project is expected to add to the scientific basis for managing rangeland ecosystems, where self-organized patterns may be important indicators of ecological degradation and components of landscape restoration. Project data will be made freely available to the public. The project will also contribute to science education in multiple ways. A post-doctoral researcher and a number of undergraduate students, including students from underrepresented groups, will participate first-hand in the field research. Many more students will benefit from new instructional units based on the research and added to the curricula at the home universities of the researchers in the U.S.