Self-organized sulfide-driven traveling pulses shape seagrass meadows.

ABSTRACT: Seagrasses provide multiple ecosystem services and act as intense carbon sinks in coastal regions around the globe but are threatened by multiple anthropogenic pressures, leading to enhanced seagrass mortality that reflects in the spatial self-organization of the meadows. Spontaneous spatial vegetation patterns appear in such different ecosystems as drylands, peatlands, salt marshes, or seagrass meadows, and the mechanisms behind this phenomenon are still an open question in many cases. Here, we report on the formation of vegetation traveling pulses creating complex spatiotemporal patterns and rings in Mediterranean seagrass meadows. We show that these structures emerge due to an excitable behavior resulting from the coupled dynamics of vegetation and porewater hydrogen sulfide, toxic to s

SUBMITTER: Ruiz-Reynes D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9934305 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature