EVOLUTION ATTEMPTS: Better communication- 1
(oooh, buuurn)
Lesser shoalcores are smaller relatives of the shoalcores in the tropical reefs. They have shrunk in size compared to their ancestor. This has shrunk their electrical charge and pheromone glands, too, shrinking communication range. Their smaller size is due to the lack of prey for a large animal in this environment. As a side note, they do far better in fresh water than their ancestors did.
The hivecase is the jawshell's descendant. It feeds near-exclusively on cattle guidelings.
The hive is the nestblob's descendant. It has three castes: the soldier, the guide and the cattle castes.
The worms of the habitat are beginning to put up a fight. Most notably, the spearfaced worm is a bottom-crawler that is nearly as large as us, and is as toxic to us as we are to it. The bottom-living worms that make up a large part of our diet are being taken by this predator.
GENERATION 9:
Ungutted shoalcore
A murky green-and-brown tentacled fish-like animal that hunts in the low visibility of the estuary. They swim with their powerful tails and use their fanged tentacles to attack and kill their prey. They grow up to 30 centimetres long, and their offspring are called tentaclets.
SENSES: It has a sense of touch that lets it figure out if it's touching food, and an extremely good sense of smell/taste. Symbiotic guidelings help it find live prey. A keen electrical sense lets it find creatures that are close to it, and it can feel vibrations in the water from moving creatures.
REPRODUCTION: It lets out male cells when they meet a mate they approve of, and growths grow inside of the womb. Younger animals are mostly male, and older animals are female, due to the pressures of swimming while pregnant. Tentaclets follow their mother until they can be dropped off at their hivecore. They eat mucus that the hive creates (although the nestblob sometimes takes either type of larva to supplement its diet) and, when they are large enough, find a suitable guideling to make a nest with. The children of the hivecore (which follow the mother and are looked after by the guidelings) are attracted to the hive-forming pheremones, and a suitable animal is chosen and burrowed into. They then leave to find a new area to live.
MOVEMENT: They move by swimming like a fish. Sacs of carbon dioxide keep them buoyant. They also have jets which also function as their gills, which they use to make fine movement.
EATING: It impales nearby blobs and digests them by drawing them into the tentacles. They are able to prey on fast swimmers, and they use venom.
PREDATION: Some species of jawworm are able to feed on the tentaclets. Other than that, the shoalcore is safe.
COMPETITION: The spearfaced worm has keen vision and an even better sense of smell. Tentacles along its back can feel our approach through pressure waves in the water.
ENVIRONMENT: A murky shallow estuary. Various species of worms (collective small ancestors of aciblobs and crawlers) burrow in the muck or swim around to filter-feed or hunt. It is usually fresh-water, although tides can cause an influx of salt.
NEARBY ENVIRONMENTS: subtropical reef, wide murky river
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Topic: Competition- An evolutionary suggestion game (Read 107641 times)