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Chia seedlings verify Alan Turing’s ideas about patterns in nature

An overhead photo of blotchy vegetation taking up the entire frame.

This blotchy vegetation in a gapped bush plateau in Niger is an example of what’s called a Turing pattern.

Nicolas Barbier/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

By James R. Riordon

LAS VEGAS – Chia seeds sprouted in trays have experimentally confirmed a mathematical model proposed by computer scientist and polymath Alan Turing decades ago. The model describes how patterns might emerge in desert vegetation, leopard spots and zebra stripes.

These and other blotchy and stripy features in nature are examples of what are called Turing patterns, so named because in 1952, Turing presented equations for how simple interactions between competing factors can lead to surprisingly complex surface patterns.