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Sagan 4 Alpha does have lower standards for plausibility than Beta, but I wonder how much of an advantage having extra digits would give. Do Scarlet Phylers outright fall out of trees and die? Or is it merely convenient to have extra digits?

If the color match is as close as the image suggests, the females must be very well camouflaged indeed.

"Ramul island" should be capitalized.

This post has been edited by Coolsteph: Dec 2 2020, 07:13 PM

Surprised this didn’t evolve from the Azure Phlyer.

This violates the diet transition rules. A species cannot jump straight from only eating one kingdom to only eating another kingdom. Purple flora and crystal flora are in different kingdoms and, further, require different adaptations to eat them because they are made of different materials (cellulose vs chitin). This will need to eat from both or have a transitional form that eats from both.

This post has been edited by Disgustedorite: Dec 2 2020, 10:22 PM

The scarlet phlyer was already eating the baseejie's 'flowers' before it evolved into the courier phlyer.

"However, scarlet phylers will "cheat" to access the sugar water: they will crack open the "flowers" with their beaks and eat the contents."

In fact, the courier phlyer is derived from a population of scarlet phlyers that ate these 'flowers' often. I suppose that needs clarification in the description.

I believe I had mentioned that on the Baseejie because, as fruit-eaters with parrot-like beaks, they would logically like sweet things and have the ability to crack open crystal hulls to get them, even if they couldn't digest crystals themselves. Baseejie's "nectar" is basically sugar water, so there would be no reason Scarlet Phylers couldn't drink that. I suppose if the Baseejie descendants' fruits were abnormally digestible, or the Courier Phyler didn't even eat the crystal parts, it would be fine. (And people do tomatoes even though they can't digest apple seeds, and pine nuts even though they can't digest pine cones, and pandas...are remarkably inefficient.)

If the Courier Phyler had something in common with its ancestor's diet (Fuzzweed berries may be the easiest) this should be acceptable.

This post has been edited by Coolsteph: Dec 6 2020, 09:03 AM

Given the nature of the two baseejie species' fruits, it's likely that the Courier Phlyer only gets its nutrition from their inside. They probably regurgitate the seeds and skin since they are unable to digest them due to their high chitin content.

Come to think of it, after looking through the description of the courier phlyer's ancestors, there's no mention of them producing owl pellet-like waste. Perhaps this derivative trait could denote the existence of the baseejie-eating population that gave rise to the courier phlyer.

I think I'm going to have to overhaul the courier phlyer's description because of its wonky diet transition, and can give rise to some interesting details.

I had assumed all plents regurgitated solid waste, a la owl pellets, and sweated out liquid waste. A lack of dedicated taxonomy pages on the Alpha timeline (beyond cladograms) makes it unclear whether certain physiological details change from distant ancestors or relatives. (e.g., in plent reproduction)

Should original organisms' descriptions be modified when future organisms interact with them? I (e.g., putting a note the Scarlet Phylers eat sugar-water from Baseejies on the Scarlet Phyler's page; making notes of constricted ranges of diseases after most of their hosts die off) It might help avoid problems later.

I think diet-changers like that should simply be rejected. The species must evolve the ability to digest a food source in another kingdom, not be retroactively made to. Being able to edit species like that freely does not set a very good precedent.