Resource availability and heterogeneity shape the self‐organisation of regular spatial patterning

Explaining large-scale ordered patterns and their effects on ecosystem functioning is a fundamental and controversial challenge in ecology. Here, we coupled empirical and theoretical approaches to explore how competition and spatial heterogeneity govern the regularity of colony dispersion in fungus-farming termites. Individuals from different colonies fought fiercely, and inter-nest distances were greater when nests were large and resources scarce—as expected if competition is strong, large colonies require more resources, and foraging area scales with resource availability. Building these principles into a model of inter-colony competition showed that highly ordered patterns emerged under high resource availability and low resource heterogeneity. Analysis of this dynamical model provided novel insights into the mechanisms that modulate pattern regularity and the emergent effects of these patterns on system-wide productivity. Our results show how environmental context shapes pattern formation by social-insect ecosystem engineers, which offers one explanation for the marked variability observed across ecosystems.Funding provided by: National Science FoundationCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000001Award Number: DEB-1355122Funding provided by: National Science FoundationCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000001Award Number: DEB-1353781Funding provided by: National Science FoundationCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000001Award Number: DMS-2052616Funding provided by: Princeton Environmental Institute, Princeton UniversityCrossref Funder Registry ID: Funding provided by: Gordon and Betty Moore FoundationCrossref Funder Registry ID: Award Number: #7800Funding provided by: Division of Mathematical SciencesCrossref Funder Registry ID: Award Number: 2052616Data includes individual termite genotypes generated with ddRADseq, as well as data for each of the termite mounds the termites were collected from. Raw sequence reads were processed with the STACKS software pipeline