“…Distinctly heterogeneous or even 'patchy' distributions are ubiquitous in different ecosystems and are seen at different spatial and temporal scales [44,45]. This phenomenon-also referred to as aggregation or patchiness [18,44] or, more generally, ecological pattern formation [59]-is known to have important implications for population dynamics [55,66,87], nature conservation and renewable resource management [16,92,93], agriculture and forestry [1,39,75,81,90], monitoring and pest control [62,64,67], etc. Correspondingly, the factors and processes resulting in ecological pattern formation have been a focus of substantial empirical and theoretical research for a few decades.…”