Huckian Period Ecosystem/Overview

Huckian Period (Week 27)

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This page concerns the current time period. As such, it may be incomplete or out-of-date. Wiki editors are invited to help expand it.

This page is under construction.

In the Huckian period, Sagan 4 is split into several major land regions and 3 major oceans. Each group of landmasses have distinctive ecosystems, which are difficult to parse from just perusing their species alone.

Land

Cosmopolitan

Not everything is restricted to just one landmass.

Flora

Many clades of small, hardy herb are found all over Sagan 4, such as marbleflora and pioneeroots. These are both especially common in early succession, as they can colonize bare rock. All landmasses are also home to some species of sunstalks, glaalgaes, chitjorns, larands, cryobowls, hollowdomes, and toxiglobes. Sunstalks in particular are common annual and perennial herbs. Various types of yanisflora are also found on most landmasses.

Among larger flora, the closest to universal might be fuzzpalms, which were spread globally by the rise of shrogs during the Bonoian period. Next to them lies the mangrovecrystals, which regularly break up and float across the sea to new shorelines. More detail will be included in the beaches section.

Decomposers

Supershrooms and sapshrooms are nigh-universal, being among the Huckian's most successful multicellular decomposers. Several cosmopolitan microbes also fill this role.

Fauna

Innumerable cosmopolitan clades occupy the soils, easily carried between landmasses by rafting events. This includes prominent detritivorous and scavenging flightless wingworms, vermees and their kin, as well as various types of bubblehorn.

Flighted wingworms such as sapworms, dartirs, and uniwingworms are also universal, carried by their wings across oceans and frequently taking advantage of floating ecologies. Characterized as a clade by ontogenetic niche shift, huge swarms of juveniles may fill many of the niches of small insects. This is especially prominent in the dartirs, which are ecologically similar to flies but can grow to nearly a foot long as adults. One exception is the predominant pollinators, the xenobees, which cannot fly from birth. Outside wingworms, other flighted creatures which enjoy a cosmopolitan status on land include various herbivorous cloudswarmers and blood-drinking gushitos.

One cosmopolitan fauna clade of interesting note is the teacup saucebacks, tiny saucebacks which mostly eat wingworms, which might seem too complex to have rafted everywhere. They actually originated in the Bonoian period, spreading globally thanks to their ectothermic, detritivorous larvae--which are eaten by just about everything and can raft just as easily as any vermee. Another group of similar note is the sruglettes, which mostly pool-hopped their way to every landmass due to their aquatic reproduction.

Beaches

Many types of semi-aquatic organism populate the oceans which need to nest on the shore, which would not otherwise qualify as cosmopolitan.

Flora

Various types of beach-dwelling tree are found on the beaches of most landmasses due to the influence of shrogs. These include fuzzpalms, obsiditrees, and a variety of fruiting violetgrass trees.

Most landmasses have mangal regions off their coastlines, which can expand the beach and create small islands. The mangals surrounding Wallace, Kosemen, Barlowe, and Lamarck especially are dominated by giant mangrove fuzzpalms. Outside of these, and inside of them as well, mangrovecrystals are a common sight due to their clonal growth form and their tendency to randomly float across the ocean.

Fauna

Many types of marine fauna spend some time on the shore, such as dohves, tamjacks, primitive tams, albedophreys, and fatcoats. Dohves, albedophreys, and fatcoats usually make landfall to breed. Tamjacks and primitive tams often bring with them floating nests, which may be filled with food and a prime target for thieves. Where there's tams, there will also be pirate waxfaces, which are mostly interested in eating the tams themselves.

Among the various coastal megafauna, of especial note is the shrogs, a tool-using sub-group of tamjacks. Their floating nests, which are made mostly of wood, are relatively well-constructed and can serve as a source of food and shelter. Shrogs also bring with them their symbiota, such as shailnitors, borvermids, harmblesses, and kakonats.

As far as small creatures go, scuttlers are a common sight on beaches, behaving similarly to Earth's crabs.

Wallace & Kosemen

Although separated by the Martyk sea, Wallace and Kosemen have very similar biota, as they only separated from one another recently. Wallace is, itself, formed from the fusion of Dixon and Darwin, which occurred in the Bonoian period. This gives both Wallace and Kosemen a distinctly diverse assemblage of fauna.

Barlowe & Lamarck

Although only connected by island chains, Barlowe and Lamarck originated from the same continental plate and share some geological characteristics, as well as a few ancient lineages.

Drake & Dingus

Drake straddles the north pole and is home to one of the most diverse assemblages of polar fauna on land. Dingus split off at the beginning of the Huckian and shares many of its fauna with Drake.

Ramul & Steiner

Ramul was formerly attached to Drake, but by the Huckian, it has grown quite far removed. Steiner is a young volcanic island chain with which it happened to collide.

Vonnegut & The Driftwoods

Vonnegut is a volcanic island chain which formed around the start of the Huckian period. Much of its biota is shared with the somewhat older Driftwoods, a unique ecosystem formed atop floating "islands" of organic matter suspended in Jujubee Ocean's major gyres, through which Vonnegut's northernmost islands intersect.

Flora

The ground of both Vonnegut and the Driftwoods is largely covered by Thalassastipaceae puffgrasses, some of which have a peculiar habit of building up dense piles of wood--the origin of the driftwood islands themselves. Inland, the largest native puffgrasses can reach heights of 4 meters. They lack some of the aggression of Earth's grasses, but they can grow back quickly when grazed. Most typical cosmopolitan herbs are also present.

Most larger flora is derived from shrog symbiota, such as fuzzpalms and coastal palm-like obsiditrees. Many of these produce edible fruit, and are common in the inland regions of the driftwoods.

Vonnegut's woodlands, however, are dominated by Snowflake Obsidioaks, which were brought by australishrogs. These trees cannot survive in the Driftwoods, as they are heavy and reliant on stable soil. They block out the majority of light beneath them, thus excluding other large flora. Other trees common in the Driftwoods may take a foodhold in the Vonnegut region upon rocky or sandy islands, especially in the mangals.

Fauna

In terms of permanent residents, the dominant megafauna of both Vonnegut and the Driftwoods are shrogs and primitive tams, the latter making up most of the herbivores while the former tends to be more carnivorous. Also reaching large sizes are a unique line of native dohves descended from the Driftwood Dasher, with the carnivorous Tyrannical Vonnegona out-sizing most shrogs in Vonnegut. Other fauna found in the region are mostly derived from shrog symbiota, including shailnitors ("shingos"), borvermids, and gulpers with mineralized teeth. Smaller invertebrate fauna such as wingworms are mostly similar to those found in Wallace and Barlowe.

The more frigid islands to the south are less populated, with the local apex predator being the kurtback, a "shrewback"-type sauceback which is barely over a foot long.

Vonnegut and the Driftwoods have a number of non-permanent residents as well, which are mostly typical shore creatures. In the driftwoods specifically, the line between permanent and non-permanent can become blurred, as shrog nests can become integrated into the islands themselves, leaving them stranded.

Fermi

A small continent which has been entirely isolated for millions of years, Fermi is home to a unique assemblage of fauna known as the "fermisaurs", as well as a variety of other fauna and flora which are found nowhere else. Despite this, the arrival of shrogs back in the early Bonoian as well as all the flora and fauna brought with them has also meant the continent has recently seen a massive upheval in their ecological composition.

Flora

Though Fermi's beaches have become quite the melting pot due to shrog influence, it becomes more distinct further inland. Most notably, Fermi is home to a wide range of sunstalk species such as the Umbrosa and the colonial sunstalks. The most diverse and sucessful of these are a clade of tree-like sunstalks sharing a common ancestor, the Spinetower, which is completely unrelated to the superficially similar obsiditrees (which instead originated in Barlowe and Dixon). They also include mangrove-like forms, which fill Fermi's mangals. Several other species of sunstalks found in Fermi such as the sunions are very closely related to these unique trees. Fermi is also home to the largest diversity of chitjorns on Sagan 4 as well as some of the largest chitjorns, all descended from the Fermi Chitjorn. Unlike their small crust-forming cousins, the oversized chitjorns of Fermi live more like cacti.

In the open regions, Fermi has a ground covering of true violetgrasses. These form a more dense covering than the sedge-like "puffgrasses" found elsewhere. However, Fermi has its own native puffgrasses as well, which are mostly restricted to the wetlands. Aside from its "grasses", Fermi is also home to many other herbs, including piloroots, a type of orbion, and its own lineage of fuzzballs. Though not technically an herb, Fermi is also home to a type of glass flora not found anywhere else, the Fermi Panelwort.

Fermi is also home to a number of naturalized variants of trees and shrubs that were previously brought by shrogs, including baebulas, obsiditrees, and fuzzweeds.

Fauna

Fermi's dominant megafauna are the titular Fermisaurs, also called thornbacks, which are tetrapode spondylozoans which usually have beaked jaws and at least one pair of "thorns" upon their back. In addition to megafauna, there are many smaller fermisaurs as well, filling a myriad of other niches.

Fermi's beaches are home to a great diversity of dohves, more so than other landmasses. One notable clade of dohves native to the continent are the velocidohves, which have recently become the dominant guild of macropredators within Fermi's woodlands and open plains. Also along the coastline is a native shrog, the Dockshrog, which constructs long chains of floating platforms for traversal through the bonegroves.

Fermi has two native sauceback clades. One is a unique waxface with a grasping neck, while the other is a young lineage of mesopredatory shrewbacks. The latter includes Fermi's answer to Earth's moles.