Motivated by the impact of worsening climate conditions on vegetation patches, we study dynamic instabilities in an idealised Ginzburg–Landau model. Our main results predict time instances of sudden drops in wavenumber and the resulting target states. The changes in wavenumber correspond to the annihilation of individual vegetation patches when resources are scarce and cannot support the original number of patches. Drops happen well after the primary pattern has destabilised at the Eckhaus boundary and key to distinguishing between the disappearance of 1,2 or more patches during the drop are complex spatio-temporal resonances in the linearisation at the unstable pattern. We support our results with numerical simulations and expect our results to be conceptually applicable universally near the Eckhaus boundary, in particular in more realistic models.

We consider a broad class of systems of nonlinear integro-differential equations posed on the real line that arise as Euler–Lagrange equations to energies involving nonlinear nonlocal interactions. Although these equations are not readily cast as dynamical systems, we develop a calculus that yields a natural Hamiltonian formalism. In particular, we formulate Noether’s theorem in this context, identify a degenerate symplectic structure, and derive Hamiltonian differential equations on finite-dimensional center manifolds when those exist. Our formalism yields new natural conserved quantities. For Euler–Lagrange equations arising as traveling-wave equations in gradient flows, we identify Lyapunov functions. We provide several applications to pattern-forming systems including neural field and phase separation problems.

We study the effect of algebraically localized impurities on striped phases in one spatial dimension. We therefore develop a functional-analytic framework that allows us to cast the perturbation problem as a regular Fredholm problem despite the presence of the essential spectrum, caused by the soft translational mode. Our results establish the selection of jumps in wavenumber and phase, depending on the location of the impurity and the average wavenumber in the system. We also show that, for select locations, the jump in the wavenumber vanishes.

We study the existence of grain boundaries in the Swift–Hohenberg equation. The analysis relies on a spatial dynamics formulation of the existence problem and a centre-manifold reduction. In this setting, the grain boundaries are found as heteroclinic orbits of a reduced system of ordinary differential equations in normal form. We show persistence of the leading-order approximation using transversality induced by wavenumber selection.

We show that lattice dynamical systems naturally arise on infinite-dimensional invariant manifolds of reaction–diffusion equations with spatially periodic diffusive fluxes. The result connects wave-pinning phenomena in lattice differential equations and in reaction–diffusion equations in inhomogeneous media. The proof is based on a careful singular perturbation analysis of the linear part, where the infinite-dimensional manifold corresponds to an infinite-dimensional centre eigenspace.

For a pattern-forming system with two unbounded spatial directions that is near the onset to instability, we prove the existence of modulated fronts that connect (i) stable hexagons with the unstable trivial pattern, (ii) stable hexagons with unstable roll solutions, (iii) stable hexagons with unstable hexagons, and (iv) stable roll solutions with unstable hexagons. Our approach is based on spatial dynamics, bifurcation theory, and geometric singular perturbation theory.