Fairy circles: Plant water stress causes Namibia's gaps in grass

Namibia's legendary fairy circles are mysterious, circular, bald patches in the dry grasslands on the edge of the Namib Desert. Their formation has been researched for decades and has recently been the subject of much debate. With extensive fieldwork, researchers from the University of Göttingen in Germany and Ben Gurion University in Israel investigated how freshly germinated grass dies inside the fairy circle.