Disregarding everything with only one vote...
Extended Proboscis 5, Writhing Mobility 4, Dig Down 1, Harden Shell 4+2, Propel Offspring 3+1, Mobile Offspring 2, Increase Size 6, Shaped Deposits 5
The cavecatcher is quite radically different from its ancestor the common blobcatcher. Instead of accreting calcite in mounds beneath itself, the huge 40 centimetre cavecatcher secretes a molecularly complex shell around itself which it anchors to the sea floor or coral reef by molecular bonding. The shell covers the whole creature except for its proboscis, which is able to retract into the shell and extend out to a range of fifteen centimetres when it senses pressure changes in the water outside the hole (the creature is otherwise blind and insensate). The proboscis now contains a sharp serrated edge to its clamping appendage, assisting it in piercing the skin of prey. When it has captured a prey organism such as a passing swimslug, the proboscis retracts and inverts, trapping the prey inside a muscular bubble where it can be crushed and then digested.
When ready to reproduce, the cavecatcher still lets out male cells upon the current. When these touch the extended proboscis of another cavecatcher, they form polyps on the proboscis. When the cavecatcher is ready to disperse its young it retracts and inverts the proboscis to form a sac of water, then squeezes it so that the child polyps are ejected by water pressure out of the shell hole.
Cavecatchers have multiple shells in their lifetime. When they have outgrown a shell or are ready to move on, they squeeze out through the feeding hole and 'swim' by rippling their bodies until they have reached a suitable new location. Then they settle down on the sea bed/coral reef and begin secreting a new shell. Often cavecatchers may come across one of their old shells, identified by touch, at which point they may investigate the shell and consume anything inside (the 'caves' provide excellent habitats for other organisms). Without any longer-range senses however, this is essentially random.
The heavy shells of cavecatchers prevent most predation through a mixture of armour and camouflage, although migratory or newly spawned cavecatchers are vulnerable to swarmblobs and swimslugs. The main food source for cavecatchers is the swimslug, a descendent of the swimblob that migrates through rippling motions and predates smaller animals and infant cavecatchers.
GENERATION 3:
Cavecatcher
A huge white slug that secretes a cave-like shell bound to the ocean floor. About forty centimetres long, the limit of possible size without more advanced internal biology.
REPRODUCTION: It lets out male cells in the current, and polyps grow on the probosces of other blobs where they land. The polyps are shot out of inverted probosces via water pressure.
MOVEMENT: Moves by rippling its body in between shell stages.
SENSES: Detects pressure changes in the water through receptors on its skin.
EATING: Proboscis extends to catch swimmers passing the mouth-hole of the shell. Occasionally harvests empty former shells of opportunists.
PREDATION: Adults largely safe from predation. Infants or migratory adults predated by swarmblobs and swimslugs. Niche predator; only targets active swimmers such as swimslugs.
COMPETITION: Very little; highly specific niche and good reproductive scattering.
ENVIRONMENT: A shallow sub-tropical sea, covered in seablob coral and thick forests of ferns. Forests of ancient blobcatcher spires rise in places, but fresh blobcatchers are now rare due to swimslug predation. Upon the open seabed, thousands of tiny artificial shell-caves cause strange eddies in the deep currents. Where old caves have been filled with sand or other debris the seabed has risen and in places caves have been built upon such broken old caves, slowly raising small islands.
Author
Topic: Adaptation - Another Evolutionary Suggestion Game (Read 17379 times)