EVOLUTION ATTEMPTS: Advanced digestive system- 6
GM's choice- 4
(The dice gods favour your humbleness, but I thought I'd give you a little extra.)
The ungutted shoalcore is a shoalcore with simple guts. Sacs under each of its tentacles make it a far more efficient hunter, as it can digest a meal while still grabbing another. The radula has moved further towards the centre of the mouth, while the reproductive system has moved upwards and outside of the mouth, as it is now a hole just behind the top set of tentacles. As a side note, the radula and moved reproduction system have changed the creature's head, splitting the 6 non-radula tentacles into two halves on either side of the mouth. The solid material of the fangs have spread into a hard but flexible strip running down the outside of the tentacles and into the head, giving it a more powerful piercing bite.
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.
This estuarine habitat is completely devoid of competitors, because of the shoalcore's ability to sneak up on jawshells and other predators unnoticed. However, the newfound efficiency of this predator is causing food sources to drop.
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 50 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 on the area of the body derived from the bases of the tentacles. 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. They still have the rather inefficient absorbing-via-tentacle feeding method.
PREDATION: Some species of jawworm are able to feed on the tentaclets. Everything is dinner for an adult estuarine shoalcore.
COMPETITION: They have no competition.
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
Author
Topic: Competition- An evolutionary suggestion game (Read 101841 times)