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Diamipede
(Reptanicrystallum pendulatimore)

Creator: Bufforpington
Ancestor: Diamiarm
Habitat: Maineiac Water Table
Size: 40 cm Long
Diet: Omnivore (Floating Stickyball, Table Cushion, Hanging Villigrass, Eusuckers)
Reproduction: Sexual (Hermaphrodite, Spores), Asexual (Fragmentation)

The Diamipede replaced its ancestor, the diamiarm due to it outcompeting its ancestor. The diamipede has undergone further changes in order to maximize its time spent on the cave ceiling. The most noticeable of these adaptations is its habit of forming chains. This chain-forming behavior is an atavistic trait derived from the cave diaminet. These chains range from 3-4 units in length, with longer specimens being rare due to their tendency to break apart. This chain-forming behavior provides the diamipede with more contact points with the ceiling due to the higher number of arms.

The arms themselves have also undergone major changes. Firstly, they have become hollow, allowing for arms bearing a finger-ringed mouth to trap prey in chambers where it is digested in a closed environment. This makes digestion much more efficient. Once the prey is digested, the diamipede will regurgitate what remains of its prey. The fingers are now petal-shaped and sport rows of chitinous teeth used to grip onto prey and surfaces. The feeding behavior of the arms differ depending on its current function. Most of the arms are devoted to consuming the flora growing on the ceiling while the diamipede crawls around. Meanwhile, the front and back arms are often free to move about, allowing them to snatch up pelagic prey like eusuckers and floating stickyballs.

The hollow structure of the arms connecting the crystal segments together are makes them rather weak, causing the diamipede to splinter from time to time. Diamipedes with only one semgent act much like their ancestor, the diamiarm. Upon growing another segment, the breakaway diamipede will revert to their normal behavior. The increased complexity of the diamipede has caused it to be unable to regrow from torn arms alone. Instead, new diamipedes can only be produced by fragmentation when an entire segment breaks off. Because of their inverted lifestyle, releasing spores into the water column has proven to be fruitless. Instead, the diamipede has developed a structure similar to the terran barnacle's phallus. This structure will erupt from the top of each crystal segment and try to find and breach the top of another diamipede's crystal segments. This allows for the gametes to fuse in a contained environment, which ensures fertilization. The spores are then released into the water column, where they grow into a ciliated larvae that survives by filter-feeding. This larvae will then develop into something resembling a diamiarm, and will behave in a similar way to its ancestor before developing into a fully fledged diamipede.

Ciliated larvae? That's interesting. I did a little research, and I can't find examples of that in either fungi or plants, but demosponges (soft sponges with skeletons) have ciliated larvae, as do some protists. I'm not sure how plausible that is, but its lineage is already several layers of weird compared to its closest Earthly comparisons, either lichens or photosynthetic sponges.
It's hard to believe these are crystalflora. (Yes, "true" crystalflora, descended from the Binucleus Crystal Shrub.)

EDIT: While this is a very strange "plant", that it can move around of its own power at all is unusual. (If "free to move about" means it can move the arms itself, rather than them being moved around in the water, as I initially assumed) Specifying that it doesn't move under its own power, or moves like real-life examples of "moving plants" (e.g., dodders seeking out prey or touch-me-nots) would help clarify the concept.

This post has been edited by Coolsteph: Feb 9 2021, 04:28 PM

Why was Diaminarm approved in the first place? It gained muscles, a nervous system, tactoreceptors, statocysts, advanced locomotion of several types, and coiling ability all at once, through its mycelium--a cell type physically incapable of gaining any of such structures or abilities--in a matter of 2.5 million years. I thought I commented on it at the time and gave my disapproval of it.

This post has been edited by Disgustedorite: Feb 9 2021, 06:03 PM

I will continuously object to this species' approval unless its ancestor is successfully completely rewritten to be plausible, though I am now calling for its decanonization because I don't believe a rewrite is possible without a redraw, and the level of change required at that point is so extreme that it will no longer be recognized as the same organism. The ancestor should not have been approved because it is possibly the least plausible organism approved since the orbit voltflora; this is just as implausible by proxy.

This post has been edited by Disgustedorite: Feb 9 2021, 07:13 PM

If you want some suggestions on movement evolving, these links might help give you some ideas:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimosa_pudica
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24025365

Yeah, I get it. The changes are too drastic. I already have a dumbed down version of the original Diamiarm planned out. The update will probably come with the next species batch. The flat diamiarm can probably stay the same with some minor modifications and be the progenitor of an Echinoderm-like clade of floral fauna.

Bufforpington Yeah I'm going to have to reject this for the time being. I think this is too drastic of a jump