What is Dissipative Structures

A general, the simplest model of a spatial dissipative structure arising in an excitable medium is constructed, containing at least two components interacting with each other with their own mobility. One of these components (active) uses the other component as food. It is shown that such a model leads to a stationary stable spatial distribution of the components in the form of Liesegang bands. As specific examples of the formation of spatial dissipative structures, structures arising in plankton consisting of phytoplankton and zooplankton and in the soil containing the bacterial population and the nutrient substrate are considered. Bifurcation diagrams are constructed in the parameter space, characteristic for each of the considered excitable media, which determine the conditions for the formation of dissipative structures in these media. The existence in the plankton of a strange attractor of a previously unknown shape in four-dimensional phase space has been discovered.