Innovative paradigms and frameworks have to be identified to enable the effective deployment and execution of pervasive computing services. Such frameworks must be conceived so as to match the spatially-situated nature of pervasive services, and must be able to exhibit properties of selforganization and self-adaptability, self-management, and of long-lasting evolvability. This paper discusses how such frameworks should get inspiration from natural systems, by enabling modeling and deployment of services as autonomous individuals, spatially-situated in a system of other services, data sources, and pervasive devices, all of which acting, interacting, and evolving according to a limited set of spatial “laws of nature”. In this context, this paper presents a reference architecture to uniformly frame such concepts, surveys and critically analyzes different natureinspired spatial metaphors to realize the idea, and details our current research agenda concerning the development of servic...