I don't have time now to go over all of it yet, but I can offer quick feedback.

Can you split the description into sections?

It's odd to describe pheromone-laden mucus as "addictive". Does it have addictive compounds in addition to pheromones? Or is it better to say that the pheromones have an irresistible luring effect? It's worth saying because some substances which are habit-forming aren't necessarily (or indisputably) addictive. Milkshakes aren't necessarily as bad as cigarettes in addictive potential.

If you do go for addictive compounds, nicotine is an option. Some plants have nicotine in their flower nectar, and bees can become addicted to it. Caffeine is another option.

"The sleeve ferine bioaccumulates cadmium and lead in its wood, with a smaller quantity in its latex."
It could be argued that, since the males eat Sleeve Ferine seedlings, the Sleeve Ferines haven't had enough time to accumulate much cadmium or lead. However, the cadmium and lead might become concentrated in the female as she eats her parthenogenetic clone-offspring. If the adult female has no way to eliminate lead and cadmium from her body, then she might eventually suffer toxic effects over years of consuming clones that have eaten sleeve ferines.

There's an "it's/its" error at the end.

How does it manage its gastrolith supply when it has a blind gut? Are its gastroliths ejected when it ejects its solid wastes? Does it reingest the gastroliths? Does it need to regularly hunt for grit or tiny pebbles because any material it uses won't last for very long anyway, due to ejection?

It seems these lie within the typical length range for a domestic chicken. It seems the typical size of small stones given to chickens as gizzard stones is 2 mm to 8 mm. (The typical size for these small stones and pieces of grit is between 2mm and 8mm. (https://cluckin.net/the-complete-guide-to-feeding-grit-and-oyster-shell-to-chickens-with-faq.html) I think most people who know the word "gastrolith" know it from dinosaur knowledge, and so might be expecting larger mineral chunks. Unless its stomach/gizzard is bigger than that of a chicken, it would surely use grit and small pebbles within its gizzard.

I hope I'll have some time to post my old Fermi flora ideas. I have various Fermi blackflora ideas that could do well in inland Fermi.

"die generation after generation" This suggests their colonization was futile, rather than inevitable for individual organisms, and significant due to the populations' colonization success.

I wonder what storage material it uses to store energy within its trunk. Glycogen, maybe? Fungi do use glycogen to store glucose.

"The Terrestrial Cloudbubble": the "The" should be uncapitalized.
"overtaking": did you mean "overtaking it"?

It's unlikely it could choke out large flora in its range, so it's worth specifying what kinds of flora it tries to choke out. Pioneeroots are probably the biggest threat in most environments or micro-habitats which actually have soil, as they spread so quickly and probably have the closest nutritional requirements. If it had a great way to compete against Pioneerroots in particular, and a decent method to either choke out or avoid (e.g., by growing up trunks, fresh logs or rocks instead), two other species, that would be plenty for it to at least be common to uncommon in most of the habitats.

It would need to be a very smart (loosely speaking) or exquisitely well-adapted plant to have excellent tactics against 4 or 5 potential competitors among the genus groups alone, given those lineages are physiologically very different from each other.* It would, simiarly, need to be very smart to identify small flora and specifically counter-attack only them, unless it had a decent screening mechanism. For example, small genus group flora probably have most or all of their roots or rootlet mass or overall spread in the first few millimeters or soil, perhaps to 2 cm deep. If these have a way of "scanning" chemical signals or smells in particular root depths, and these chemical signals fall within a certain strength range (so that there isn't a big mass of roots just below or behind the "scanned" range), then, a decent amount of the time, it would guess correctly that there's a small flora it can siege.

One other method, which is pretty mindless but might be hard to evolve all at once since its ancestry has been out of root-warfare for a while, would be depositing allelopathic chemicals that work pretty well to excellently on multiple kinds of flora. One simple method to detect whether other flora are potentially threats is to let it keep just a trace of Cloudbubble Cryoutines in its roots, and detect its species from others (but especially Pioneeroots) based on chemical emissions from Cloudbubble Cryoutines.

Notably, hydrogen gas is an asphyxiant at very high concentrations. If it kept Cloudbubble Cryoutines/a specifically-adapted descendant in its roots, it could just flood pore spaces in soil a few centimeters around it, which woud displace oxygen somewhat, and stunt or redirect any root growth of would-be rivals. It could temporarily not grow in the passage while it's hydrogen-filled, or have some way of withstanding high hydrogen concentrations to occupy the potential root spaces quickly and exclude competitors from it. Actually...provided the battle-zone is both at least a centimeter down from the surface, and is in very compacted soil with few possible air spaces, high concentrations of hydrogen would probably at least slow down the roots of almost any kind of small flora without a lot of root mass or specialized circulatory systems.

In other words: if it had a huge, well-coordinated army (chemical signaling in the colony), great supply lines (nutrient sharing, especially from areas not surrounded by competitors, like up a tree trunk), and moderately good chemical warfare, it could eventually win by siege against almost any similarly-sized or smaller foe that didn't have similar advantages or resistances, at least under the conditions of cold, relatively dry, high-UV full-sun environments with very compacted soil and battle zones at least 1 cm deep. Just one sufficiently big and heavy fauna stomping around could crush Pioneeroots, but be resisted by Terrestrial Cloudbubbles, and then compact the soil, allowing it to siege-out an isolated patch of Pioneeroots very quickly. If it's in a place with high-clay soil, heavy organisms 150 pounds or heavier, or both, those would be ideal for quickly outcompeting Pioneeroots.

....I just spent 20 minutes figuring out thorough quasi-military tactics for how a purple alien moss could win in slow-motion siege warfare against five other very different alien plants. In certain soil conditions and root depths, the game is basically set as soon as it starts pumping in hydrogen into limited pore spaces, because none of its competitors has adapted to anything like it. It would need water to make the hydrogen, but, oh no, it can just collect morning dew or mountain fog on its leaflets like a moss. In very specific conditions against very specific foes, this could be nearly unstoppable.

Whether it can spread to other habitats depends on how it could differentiate a niche compared to genus group species. This is a pioneer species, as are many small genus-group flora. Now, I figure that no one would reject a new submission based on competition with a genus group flora, out of the principle of increasing biodiversity, but this one's in a particular bind because it might compete to some extent with five groups, including three well-adapted to most of those particular environments.

These would surely compete with Tepoflora (1 mm to 5mm tall), Chitjorns (1-5 cm tall), Pioneroots, Cryobowls and possibly, to a small extent, Hikerflora. Tepoflora, Cryobowls and Chitjorns all hav some combination of adaptations to cold, snowy conditions and poor soil. In the harsher habitats of Lamarck Peak, Lamarck Alpine, and Lamarck Highboreal, there would surely be less species biodiversity among its competitor genus groups, and since I designed Hikerflora to have surprisingly narrow operating temperatures, in the harsher environments Terrestrial Cloudbubbles would have very little if any competition with Hikerflora throughout the year. That's not even counting the greater local-flora diversity and abundance in less harsh environments.

You'd have to explain how it can differentiate a niche among multiple species of 3-5 genus groups. Notably, Chitjorns, Tepoflora, and Pioneerroots and Hikerflora all reproduce asexually. If Sagan 4 had more diseases or parasites, including ones which affected genus groups, Terrestrial Cloudbubbles could establish themselves when competitor colonies are weakened or wiped out by parasites or disease. Still, Cryobowls do reproduce sexually, so that reason alone wouldn't weaken them.

You mentioned it can climb up the trunks of larger flora. That might allow it to differentiate a niche among Pioneeroots, since they don't seem to climb up trunks. Notably, in the northern hemisphere, the south-facing side of a slope gets more sunlight and is warmer during the winter. (see source: https://sciencing.com/differences-between-n...s-8568075.html)

Pioneeroots have explicitly "Super Fast Aesexual Budding" and are also purpleflora, so they would compete for the same light frequencies under shading flora. Its advantage against them might be the ability to share nutrients among its colony using its roots, coordinate reproduction, and evolve faster under an unpredictable environment, while retaining the ability to rapidly spread advantageous mutations by asexual reproduction. In other words: if it has some way to sense there's a competitor nearby, or just takes up nutrients very aggressively, it could run a slow siege tactic against any competing Pioneerroots, particularly on poor soil. It might also resist being stepped on by fauna more, which would be more of an advantage in environments with huge, heavy fauna in big migrations or large numbers of heavy fauna in general.

You'd need to put a lot of thought into what sort of adaptations it would need to compete against several genus groups and potentially local flora in all those environments.
There are other ideas for how it can compete, but there's something else I need to do at the moment.

The "Description" at the beginning of the description should be omitted, and there should be a paragraph space between the template an the start of the description.

"spawning is their main method of reproduction," The comma should be a colon. I recommend using "its" for this sentence, rather than "their", as "their body" is confusing.

Otherwise, I lack sufficient knowledge on the lineage and this time period to say anything.

I don't typically check the retro submissions subforum, but, as a quick check: you'll need to put the common and scientific name in the same line. "It's ancestor" is a typo: "its ancestor" is meant.

"for some reason" is a sort of hand-wave: you should give a reason or two, even if it's vague. You can say they initially fell to the ground on mountain peaks, alpine habitats, or barren habitats, and were able to survive due to having fairly few competitors or would-be herbivores. Peaks are very harsh, although, as of Generation 145, several peaks nonetheless had multiple macro-sized fauna. Darwin Peak, South Dixon Peak, and North Dixon Peak had the fewest, with 5 macro organisms each. Always Polar Riparian, Irinya Polar Riparian, and BioCat Mountain Riparian are some examples of habitats that were (on the wiki; not counting organisms not yet retroactively-added) barren at the time that Nimbuses were probably well-suited to live in.

"Animals" is the incorrect terminology: we use "fauna" here. "standing water" is missing a comma.
It's odd that it seems to have no mechanism to avoid or minimize the spread of harmful mutations.

The paragraphs are very short, so I recommend merging them. I recommend merging the first and second paragraphs, and the third and fourth paragraphs.

While the distance-depictions are handy, I believe what Disgustedorite was asking you to do was depict at least two other species at the micro-level.

EDIT: Apparently, the "for some reason" issue actually comes from its ancestor, so it's not your fault. If making this a retro-submission and descendant of the Nimbus Pile won't work, a quick re-color and a few other minor tweaks could make it work as an Alpine Cirrus descendant. Alpine Cirruses already live on the ground in big colonies in downy strands in alpine and the highboreal environments, where they have little competition (though developments in flora in that habitat have surely since altered things).

QUOTE (TheBigDeepCheatsy @ Sep 12 2022, 01:01 AM)

I believe it is now ready for approval. Would anyone mind if I did so?

One recommendation: I recommend the paragraphs be split into sub-sections. If the ecological details have been settled, I can go over the description of the organism itself in a few hours to check for typos and clarity.

QUOTE (Disgustedorite @ Sep 11 2022, 10:37 PM)

It could be as simple as floating lower and lower because there's more nutrients closer to the ground until it ceased floating at all.

That's a good point. The amount of spore, seed, and pollen aeroplankton would probably be greater lower to the ground, and possibly minerals, too.

Primalpikachu, you should should also capitalize "Lamarck Peak" in the template.

That's an American Dragon: Jake Long reference in the name, isn't it? The art is very pleasant through its coloring, texturing, and pose.

Normally, scales on a mammaloid would require some explanation, but the lineage does have a long history of scales and scale-like spikes. The ancestor of its ancestor had scales on its belly, after all, and the Longjack also had subtler, pebbly scales on its belly. I recommend mentioning the long history of scales, spikes and scutes in Lutrasoricidae/tamjacks, and how its small body scales are simply an expansion of its ancestor's belly-scales.

It is very large. It might be useful to mention how much of its length is its tail.

Does it retain any vestige of its pouch?

Do its young have any predators? I figure Seashrogs and Wolvershrogs are some candidates. Great Leotams hunted its ancestor, but they don't seem to have overlapping habitats anymore.

Since discarding a symbiont essential to its ancestor's lifestyle is so very rare on Sagan 4, it would help to elaborate on why it lost the symbiont. Sugar (from photosynthesis) is surely not in short supply in the troposphere, and its ancestor got moisture from clouds. If Cloudbubble Cryoutines required minerals from windborne dust to sustain strong flight, that could be a reason Cloudbubbles could reduce symbiont investment. This is especially true if the mineral needed is phosphorus, which is often a limiting nutrient in real-life plant ecology. Admittedly, Cloudbubbles do eat aeroplankton (presumably troposphere fauna dung, various spores, Hairy Sky Phlyer hairs, etc.) so they have more nutrients to work with than one might expect, but it's possible a subpopulation that used relatively-limited mineral resources for its reproduction rather than for Cloudbubble Cryoutines had enough survival fitness to eventually adapt to low-altitude flight around the peaks. With such a lengthy "evolutionary story", though, it might be worth having them retain just a little of their former relationship with the symbiont: say, ejecting their spores in tiny balloon structures held aloft by a bit of hydrogen during breezy days, like a sort of zeppelin/kite blend.

However, you could also note that, due to its abundant offspring, multiple reproductive methods and presumably very short generation times, significant mutations can both arise and spread rapidly, allowing relatively big jumps in just one Generation. It's like stalk-eyed flies: in Sagan 4 terms, one could get a stalk-eyed fly from a picture-winged fly in just one Generation, very plausibly, but an equivalent distance for a long-lived mammal with few offspring (say, Malayan tapir to Asian elephant) would take longer.

There is a precedent other than parasites: hagfish. A hagfish can absorb nutrients through its skin. Admittedly, this surely becomes relevant only or largely while it's burrowing through a rotten carcass, which is a situation sort of similar to that of a tapeworm's.

One source says: "Most echinoderms can absorb dissolved food through exposed skin".

However, I am not sure how plausible it would be to implement in this organism. As a compromise, you could add both digestive processes conventional for the line and, as a minor ability, absorption of nutrients through the skin. If it lives in the open ocean, but not deep enough for nutrient-mixing layers, then the amount of food available would be limited. Therefore, it would have a sort of evolutionary incentive to evolve nutrient absorption through its skin to supplement its diet.

Please trim the excess white space in the image.

If you don't want to re-draw it, it may be possible to overhaul it to feed through silt like a sea cucumber. This is a bigger change, but you could also adjust its habitat depth and make it full of photosynthetic symbionts, and so live like an upside-down jellyfish (Cassiopeia).

Can you trim both images to remove excessive empty space? The little purple dot in the main image, as well as the paper border in the supplemental image, is particularly distracting.

You'll also have to separate the two images in your submission. The main image goes on top, while the supplemental image typically goes in between paragraphs, or at the bottom, below the description.

"derivative": You mean "descendant".
Why has it lost its relationship with the Cloudbubble Cryoutine? Maintaining a symbiosis can, in certain circumstances, cost more energy than it's worth. For example, when plants with relationships with phosphorus-mining soil fungi live in soil high in phosphorus, they give fewer resources to their fungual symbionts. It doesn't really make sense that it would, all at once, lose its relationship with a symbiont crucial to its lifestyle and drop to the forest floor.

It makes more sense that it would decrease symbiont investments to save energy, float in lower altitudes that usual, and end up settling on Lamarck Peak, perhaps spreading from there to Lamarck Alpine. (I would select someothing on Barlowe, but Barlowe no longer has high-altitude habitats.) Its flat, mosslike shape already makes it a plasuible candidate for such a harsh environment. Lamarck Highboreal is probably ecologically closest to what you were originally going for within some plausibility, so you could say it spread from Lamarck Peak to Lamarck Alpine to Lamarck Highboreal. However, Lamarck Alpine does have Blastrees, which are remarkably tall by alpine standards. (It's because they're glassflora, and glassflora have alien physiologies well-suited for cold conditions.) Many plants that can reproduce sexually retain the ability to reproduce asexually, and given the harsh conditions, retaining the capacity to reduce asexually seems useful.

If you extend it to Lamarck Highboreal, you may be able to keep the fire adaptations in its description, since it seems boreal forests do experience fires.

I can provide more information after a response to this feedback.

It seems this highly unusual metabolic process of uncertain biological plausibility has greatly slowed down the rate of approval.

I am aware of three options:

1. Remove thermosynthesis, with the remaining traits making it a very large colony (?) of highly heat-resistant, copper-using microbes.
2. Overhaul the description to make use of thermosynthesis as plausible as possible, with this link (https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/35201/thermosynthetic-life-form) as a possible source.
3. Graveyard the submission, since overhauls would greatly change the nature of the submission anyway, to the point it's like a new organism.

QUOTE (TheBigDeepCheatsy @ Sep 10 2022, 01:47 AM)

Any updates for this @Coolsteph?

No. My attention has been split among many things lately. Looking over Sagan 4 organisms to provide feedback seemed more important, as Sagan 4 tasks go. Some submissions haven't had a response since August 7, apparently.

A quick check suggests grasses live in mangrove forests (Mangals) only in the inland side, so you may need to specify that. It's hard to say whether any non-Spartina (an exotic species), non-submerged (non-"seagrass") grass species live in mangals from a quick check. Submerged seagrass-esque species are surely too specialized for a genus.

However, since the mangals surely experience storm-related flooding, it's possible even the spores or individual flora would be occasionally transported elsewhere. Since there is that tiny Ittiz Temperate Rainforest Archipelago island very conveniently between the Ittiz and and Abello Archipelagos, I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation that the distance is roughly 58.7 miles.

In case you're wondering, I "eyeballed" the distance by comparing the globe map to Google Maps' globe map, picking two states that were small and close together, and making two pins of roughly the distance, which happened to fall in "Harrison Township School District, Harrison Township, New Jersey" and "Cecil County, Maryland".

In all likelihood, there are probably insignificant islets not visible from space in between. As an example of an insignificant islet that could be a stepping stone, Just Room Enough Island in New York's Thousand Islands island chain is only 310 m2, just barely enough room for a house, and it still has some grass.

In short: that vaguely kidney-bean-shaped island is what makes the jump plausible without even a loss in genetic diversity as a penalty. (I've already spent about 30 minutes on this one evaluation, so I think researching the spread of non-coconut plants that float through the ocean would be excessive.)

These are full sun-only, right, and live in soil of moderate to high fertility, right?

Yes, all those ancestors listed are extinct in Generation 166. Unless you can get a retro-submission slot preceding Generation 148, where the longer-lasting ones were outcompeted by Kyanoses, your best option is to make these descended from the Kyanoses genus group. Kyanoses are descended (by a few steps) from Cryosagania. I suggest the latter, because the slots preceding Generation 148 may be all taken by now. That's just about the ancestors: I'll have to come back later for a more thorough look at other things.

(Note: I made this without looking at the description, just to engage in broad discussions of it. I see know that you've pointed out it loves to eat berries.)

You could probably cheat a little on the exact length of the torso by saying it eats mainly highly digestible tissues, such as berries and tender new leaves, and that its stomach is farther up in its body than one might guess. It could have a crop, although that would surely make the neck or chest bigger. You could also make it re-eat its feces, like a rabbit, although I'm not sure how practical that would be for something of its size. Since it does live in some tropical habitats, and has a broad diet, it's possible berries could be a significant part of its diet year-round in some habitats.

EDIT:
https://www.life.illinois.edu/ib/453/453lec9herbivory.pdf
It seems longer-lived leaves are tougher with more tannins (antinutrients that deter feeding), so if this eats mainly pioneer/early-succession species, its diet should be more digestible.

QUOTE (Hydromancerx @ Sep 9 2022, 12:53 PM)

QUOTE (Disgustedorite @ Sep 9 2022, 10:18 AM) Crystals wouldn't really benefit from these at all, though. Neither would any other mixotrophic flora. So not Crystal Flora or Glass Flora but there are other types too like Bone Flora and Twink Flora.

"Twink Flora." Knowing the slang term "twink" exists and is an odd thing to attach to alien organisms, I'm not sure if it's a good idea to draw so much attention to that component of the name. Perhaps yellowflora (to match the color terms "blackflora" and "purpleflora") or "gelatins" or "iiros"?

If it helps, you could mention the use of natural cosmetics in some real-life birds (https://www.audubon.org/news/these-birds-wear-makeup). Due to the sheer variety of colors on Sagan 4, it's possible some bluish microbes could accumulate in puddles or other fairly large quantities.

While highly contrasting colors generally indicate an animal is poisonous, or imitating a poisonous animal, it can also simply be a signal it's highly aggressive. Norway lemmings are believed to have contrasting orange colors as an aposematic signal. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway_lemming) Badgers and ratels ("honey badgers") are said to have aposematism because they are highly aggressive and well-armed.

I'm making a quick check here. Can you split up the description into at least four sections?

QUOTE (OviraptorFan @ Sep 8 2022, 07:16 PM)

Also here is an important question, how is the fur of the Quillyn blue? If I recall correctly, mammals(which furred shrews in modern times are pretty much an analogue to in many respects) can't really have blue fur, with the closest color being stuff like purpule. With that in mind, how does your Quillyn get around this problem and have blue fur, or alternatively, why not it be a different distinct color like a bright red or violet? Also the torso is way too short, its a problem in the original artwork of the cheekhorns as well, as it means they have no room for guts at all.

Assuming we need to obey real-world logic for this, instead of acknowledging the fact it's an alien that strongly resembles a mammal, then it could be structural coloration, incorporation of pigments that do not exist on Earth into its hair a la flamingos and their feathers with their diet of crustaceans, or both. The color brings to mind cryoflora, and the plants one eats can somewhat alter skin color in mammals (humans, specifically). However, it doesn't eat cryoflora.

"usually: well-rotted carcasses" This has no need for a colon.
"like its ancestor strategy": You probably meant: "Like its ancestor, its reproductive strategy".

Otherwise, everything looks good. The description is short for post-revival Alpha entries, but not conspicuously so. It's a bit odd it doesn't live in Raptor Tropical Rainforest, since it surely has plenty of food and good egg-laying sites, is contiguous with its other habitats, and it lives in a huge strip of rainforest/woodland habitats. However, it's not actually necessary to expand there.
The respiration of the krugg lineage should be elaborated upon at some point, but the missing information doesn't seem so significant as to substantially delay the approval of this organism. Respiration would certainly be worth figuring out if it were, say, 1 m long, but at 10 cm falls within the size of a large giant weta on Earth, so it's plausible even if it uses roachlike respiration.