3nd Turn
Events
Strength Dice: 89
Temperament Dice: 7
The small stream that came from above has sharply increased in size and as such the lake has expanded onto the flat coasts, creating additional lakebed. The increased depth is not much of a problem since the most of the lake was already very shallow in the first place.
You all get a +1 in you rolls this due to udden population expansion and the resizing of the gene pool.
Team Chaos
Knightwing64: More defined musculature: 2+1=3
Branchrooted Turnip
Turnip lineage evolved the ability to branchiate their feeding tendrils throught their hosts bodies, allowing for better area control. But unlike what one may assume, these adaptation have appeared not because a need to get better at their parasitism, but through intraspecific competiton between turnips.
As they multiplied and got more and more abundant throught the lake, especially after the lakes expansion, copious turnips killing a single host became the norm. This caused periodic die-offs and repopulation events across a few dozen millenia. Throught this process, the turnip that which could hold onto a host in smaller numbers survived better.
They slowly outcompeted their ancestors, taking advantage of the fact that a turnips body is where their tendrils grow from and simply growing into it randomly, while their own body is far into their root and safe.
They still digest and parasitise eachother, but the survival rates are higher since the main body is now protected away in case of skirmishing. Parasitism is still a problem though. You also have no senses whatsoever.
Status: LC
Description: A small proto-animal. It is a parasite, it attaches itself to faunal hosts and feeds off of them with a set of long, branching tendrils that grow when attached to suitable surfaces. It's tissues have the ability to flex and move. It reproduces asexually by occasionally budding.
Habitat: The warm and pebbly mountain lake floor, attached to other peas.
Team Divergent
Mercur: A blind stomach: 5+1=capped at 5
Suctioned Puffer
The expansion of the lake floor has a side effect; while the area of feeding and the total amount of food has increased, the nutrition value of the sediment per square meter actually decreased, since the source of the food is still the same size and is dispersed thinner along the lakebed. Because of these changes, the mobile puff lineage evolved ways to better get the nutrients out of soil.
The feeding tendrils, at first, were pulled onto a depression on the front of the creature so that more absorbtion could be achieved. Then this depression got deeper and most of the tendrils moved into it, essentially forming a stomach. Throught time, the tendril inside the stomach were shrunk in size into cilia, while the ones that lined the mouth were reduces to six, got paddle-like and gained necessary musculature to shove silt into the mouth.
You have no way of telling anything. And without skeletal, cardiovascular and nervous systems, you can't really develop further.
Status: LC
Description: A rotund proto-animal around 9-10 centimeters in diameter. It aimlessly crawls on the lake floor with 10 pairs of tentacles and digests any organic debris it can catch with its gaping maw, using six shovelling appendages that line it to shove the food into it. It passively respirates through its short coat of hair-like tendrils that cover its body. It reproduces asexually by occasionally budding.
Habitat: The warm and pebbly mountain lake floor.
Team Sol
TricMagic: A framework of cellulose cell walls: 4+1=5
Paper Pancake
Besides getting its shape back and expanding by a large amount, these is not much to be noticed with the naked eye, maybe besides the change in texture, increased buoyancy and a more durable composition.
But when looked at microscopically, the profound changes in these violet flora are much more apparent than a simple glance. The violet lineage have evolved to have hexagonal cells walls that greatly increase the durability of the protoplants structure. And by streamlining the shape of the plant, these walls allow to stay buoyant above the water.
To still be able to reproduce though, the paper pancakes edges are still mostly soft, with small dots of walled tissue. This is so that once the soft tissue splits away, it will hopefully take a few of these dots too, and use them as an anchor point to skeletonise again. Besides this, most of a fully grow paper pancake is reinforced.
They are now found all along the lakes relatively deeper areas, following the flow in the thousands.
Status: LC
Description: A violet protoplant that resembles a featureless lily pad 5 centimeters in diameter. It is very efficent at what in its way of life. Besides from its very edges, the entirety of the plant is reinforced by a network of hexagonal cell walls. It reproduces asexually by shedding its softer outer edges, which grow independantly.
Habitat: The warm waters of the mountain lake, particularly at the surface.
Team Tetramylsis
flazeo25: A vascular system: 2+1=3
Veiny Daisies
The recent millenias worth of rapid evolution has refined, but otherwise not changed the clusters of daisies by a huge amount.
The main vacuole now has an opening, throught which it periodically expells gasses, takes in nutrients, and reproduces by improvised microspores that are really just clumps of cells. This main tunnel branches into countless much smaller ones that each connect to an outer tendril, using liquid pressure to better push the mucus onto the tendrils.
There is not much of a change to its lifestyle, except that it has lost its ability to shed its outer edges to reproduce.
Status: LC
Description: A purple protoplant vaguely shaped like a frilly flower. It's the size of a nickel. It is flat for the most part, except for the storage vacuole on its center, which is usually filled with nutrient rich water or waste gasses. This vacuole is connected to the outside by a short entrance that itself branches into tendrils that line the plants outer edges. It is capable of secreting a sticky substance from a ring of vacuoles that, when its carried over onto their tendrils by the smaller canals, allows it to form mats on the water surface by sticking to eachother. It reproduces asexually by periodically releasing microscopic pieces of itself every gas expelling routine. These pieces then grow into full daisies independantly.
Habitat: The warm waters of the mountain lake. Particularly at the surface in the form of piles.
Team Pizza
Leonardo8: Dirt armor made of digested dirt: 4+1=5
Sandy Corndog
You may mistake it for a stone or a piece of dog feces at first, but it is the Sandy Corndog, an animal that utilised its own excrement as an armor to defend against its incidental predators.
Corndogs have ditched the idea of a single exit entirely, and instead they expell the dirt they eat from the dozens of small holes on the sides and back. These holes lace the dirt with a sticky, yet fast solidifying mucus that when combined with the movement of the animal, allow it to be spread all around its body and form a hardened, multiplated defense, digestion-proof itself.
The shells provide the much needed support the animal needed in its movement, and the corndog is just a bit faster than its ancestors. Along with that, this new system allows the dirt to stay in for longer, making digestion more efficent.
There are some negatives too though. Budding is now an ardulous affair, the young has to break through the shell to get out, which leaves the parent with a damaged shell that takes some time to heal. And respiration has also become harder, the shell doesn't allows much water to touch the tissues underneath.
And even though it has a shell now, it is still more often than not picked up and eaten by the puffers, which digest it through its belly.
Status: NT
Description: A tubular proto-animal 2 centimeters in lenght. It slides along the lake floor and eats any organic debris it can detect with its ability to detect specific chemicals in the water using its circula mouth and yellow lips, with digestion done in the tube shaped cavity that is lined with absorbant tissue. It lacks an anus, and instead has many small exits that mix the dirt a mucus that solidifies on the creatures sides and back to form a segmented dirt armor. It reproduces asexually by occasionally budding.
Habitat: The warm and pebbly mountain lake floor.
Environmental And Ecological Report
The lake is about 75% larger than it was before. The shores of it now coincide onto a much rockier and steep outer edges of the crater. Yes, crater. The lake is actually a rather large caldera filled with water.
These more solid and rockier shores is the habitat of a new species. Aegla, also known as Violet Seaweed, is the descendant of the as of late Brittle Pancake. It's mostly the same except it much, much more sticky, which allows it to stick to the rock surfaces along the shores and the rockfall area formed earlier, forming dense growths. The substance they use to stick to the rocks is also used to digest the rocks for minerals.
A new habitat and niches have formed, ladies and gentlemen.
Not much has changed in the ecology this turn, and the deadline is approaching.
More players are much appreciated.
Author
Topic: Competive Evolution: Season 2, Turn 8 (7/20) (Looking for players) (Read 9165 times)