Question of the Week

[ailelie]

Note: I'll post a Talk post later today.

(2) Following off #1, list some common features for the plants and animals for each trophic level (main predator, secondary predators (smaller and larger), producer-eaters, and producers) in the areas of your world most important to you (save the information for other areas for later if you need them). This may help you avoid the 'rabbit with a funny name' trope. Later when you need an animal, you can steal a couple ideas from this list, allowing you to make unique flora/fauna that also looks like it could fit within your ecosystem. Also, since you have a list for each level, you already know where the creature fits within the ecosystem and how preyed up and populous it must also be.


The point of this question is to organize the information you gathered in the first question and put it into a format that may be usable later on. This can be a big thing, or you can just add some notes to the work you did before.

If you start naming the animals, remember that your names may need accounting for when you design a language.

Comments

[annariel]

Broadly speaking I have animals and plants imported from Earth and the animals and plants native to New Gabarone. I'm going to concentrate on the latter.

I said previously that the area around Landfall was going to have a mediterranean sort of climate. Let's assume, for the sake of not getting too wierd, that life still broadly falls into animals and plants (yes, I know, bacteria, funghi, lichens and goodness knows what else, but let's stick with animals and plants, eh?) and that the key requirements plants need are sunlight, water and minerals and they are going to work with Chlorophyll (so they'll be green, mostly).


Producers: Since the climate is relatively hot it will be water that is in short supply for plants around landfall. Seasons are more prounounced than on Earth so they will also have to be a bit hardier in winter and a bit more sparing of water in summer. If this was Earth I'd be thinking succulents. But lets assume instead that they typically have water storage containers in hard shells (like coconuts?) and let's assume these hard shells are made out of some kind of chitinous material, so they are white/black/multicoloured instead of brown. I'll also assume that we have sexual dimorphism but, like many Earth plants, most of these plants have both male and female organs. They rely on the full range of mechanism (wind, exploding pods, animals) for pollination and to transmit their seeds, so some of the plants are going to fruit, supplying nutrition needed by animals in a neat advertising package (or possible just those water containers). Let's assume though that flowers are a rarity and instead plants advertise with those water containers which attract pollinating animals to the water.

Producer Consumers: Let's assume these fill the full size range from teeny tiny bugs up to (for the sake of amusement value) big apatosaurus type things. Since we have plants with chitinous shells around water containers, it seems reasonable to suppose that, until size makes them impractical, chitinous exo-skeletons are going to be popular, and armoured plates, made from chitinous material are also popular. I'm also going to carry on the idea of having both types of sexual organ into the animal kingdom because, you know, we needed be too earthlike. Animals, like camels, probably typically have water-carrying capacity. Smaller animals are generally cold-blooded, but let's assume that giving birth to live young is much more common. Let's assume a lot of the producer consumers are quite social, there are a lot of herd animals with various sorts of social hierarchies and a lot of joint care of young. They are very seasonal, maybe, with a lot of hibernation because of the extremes of temperature.

Secondary Predators: I'm going to assume these guys have been optimised for speed. Since a lot of the producer consumers are armoured, they are probably slow. However secondary predators are going to need sharp teeth to get through that armour. Let's also make armour-piercing horns and spikes common. Like the producer consumers there is a lot of sociality among the secondary predators and a fair bit of pack hunting. Not so much water carrying though, they are relying far more on their prey, and their water stores, for water.

Main Predators: Since we have big prey animals, lets have big main predators, which grow fat in the animal rich summer and then struggle through the winter as their fat burns off and they dig the producer consumers and secondary predators out of their burrows. Unlike most of the other animals these are loners. They are optimised for strength but their size also gives them a lot of speed when it comes to those pesky little secondary predators. They don't bother so much with the armour, but do carry reserves of water as well as fat.