Fairy circles are striking regularly sized and spaced, bare circles surrounded by Stipagrostis grasses that occur over thousands of square kilometres in Namibia. The mechanisms explaining their origin, shape, persistence and regularity remain controversial. One hypothesis for the formation of vegetation rings is based on the centrifugal expansion of a single individual grass plant, via clonal growth and die-back in the centre. Clonality could explain FC origin, shape and long-term persistence as well as their regularity, if one clone competes with adjacent clones. Here, we show that for virtually all tested fairy circles the periphery is not exclusively made up of genetically identical grasses, but these peripheral grasses belong to more than one unrelated genet. These results do not support a clonal explanation for fairy circles. Lack of clonality implies that a biological reason for their origin, shape and regularity must emerge from competition between near neighbor individuals within each fairy circle. Such lack of clonality also suggests a mismatch between longevity of fairy circles versus their constituent plants. Furthermore, our findings of lack of clonality have implications for some models of spatial patterning of fairy circles that are based on self-organization.

仙女圈正以规则的大小和间距撞击，被Stipagrostis包围的裸圈纳米比亚成千上万平方公里的草。解释其起源，形状，持久性和规律性的机制仍存在争议。关于植物环形成的一种假设是基于单个单草植物在中心的克隆生长和消亡后的离心扩张。如果一个克隆与相邻克隆竞争，克隆性可以解释FC的起源，形状和长期持久性及其规律性。在这里，我们显示出，对于几乎所有经过测试的仙女圈，外围并不是专门由遗传相同的草组成的，而是这些外围草属于多个不相关的族。这些结果不支持对仙女圈的克隆解释。缺乏克隆性意味着其起源的生物学原因，形状和规律性必须来自每个仙女圈内近邻个体之间的竞争。这种缺乏克隆性也暗示了仙女圈的寿命与其组成植物之间的不匹配。此外，我们缺乏克隆性的发现对一些基于自组织的仙女圈空间图案化模型产生了影响。