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It's taking quite a long time to get the Week 4 ecosystem page up for the Beta timeline, since the organism listings need to be entered and sorted manually and there are only a few people entering the data. I've given up on sorting them by size in the more populated habitats.

Some kind of wiki macro that automatically adds brackets to each organism name and spaces them out appropriately would save a lot of labor. Other wikis, perhaps Bulbapedia, might already have tools like this. It might be possible to use some kind of automatic data-scraping tool to enter a list of organisms and have the wiki sort them by size, but I have a feeling that's more difficult to do. I don't think sorting by lifestyle categories (Flora, Fauna, Other, Micro Producer and Micro Consumer) should be entirely automated, because of how easily organisms can switch categories, but a category "guesser" with manual double-checking could still help.

I also figured out how to make drop-down spoiler boxes for organism listings a few days ago. Given just how much space well-populated habitats can take up on the ecosystem, it could be useful to use them on the well-populated habitats. I suggest using it on either habitats with more than 40 species, or habitats with more than 40 species in a single category (typically, Fauna).

Although I had the Beta timeline in mind when suggesting these things, it would also apply to the Alpha timeline. If anything, the Alpha timeline would need the spoiler boxes more, due to existing for longer, with more species, and having a supercontinent.

This post has been edited by Coolsteph: Apr 4 2021, 09:51 AM

I now have a version of the collapsible template up on my user page. I used Dorite Subtropical Ocean as a sample.

This post has been edited by Coolsteph: Apr 13 2021, 08:42 PM

It's not possible for an organism to live in the entirety of Dixon-Darwin Rocky, Dixon-Darwin High Grassland, Dixon-Darwin Desert, and whatever that nearby yellow habitat is (Dixon Dunes?) unless it's able to cross several rivers. Should it be presumed the rivers are much narrower than they seem on the map, and can be forded by organisms good at wading or swimming? Are they all slow-moving and/or shallow rivers with many island "rest stops"? Should one assume periodic droughts that decrease the rivers' sizes?

There has never been a rule that rivers must be crossed to get between biomes. They must also be much narrower than they are on the map, as otherwise they would be a few hundred kilometers wide.

I believe it would be beneficial to sort flora and fauna in the ecosystem pages for the Alpha timeline, as it is in the Beta timeline. It might even be useful to sort them roughly by color or type, where habitats have many species of various colors or types. I would be willing to sort the flora on Alpha. For this purpose, I don't think it's that important to sort them by size.

I noticed that some of the bigger habitats on Alpha have many, many flora. Before there was such a diversity of flora, it might have made sense for large fauna to be colored like the local soil, but when there's high flora density or when they're small fauna that don't move much from high-density areas (i.e., like lizards or bugs on trees) it makes more sense for them to be colored like the local flora. The fact some habitats have multiple dominant flora colors means that, short of color-changing, being nocturnal, or sticking exclusively to large clusters of particularly-colored flora, that some medium-sized to large fauna would really stick out if they're single-colored and adapted to just one flora type.

P.S. I just noticed Vivus Rocky doesn't have a soil color: it's just "rocks and soil". Other Vivus habitats are black. I believe Vivus Rocky, as a whole, should also have black soil. Are there any objections before I fix that?

I agree with everything you've said above. We could probably also use to divide them further, even, in both cases, for example dividing "macro consumer" into categories for "sessile" and "motile", et cetera. In general, though I think the species in the ecosystem pages definitely need to be further divided into categories! BTW what exactly did you mean by "color" and "type"? Do you mean literal coloration and... taxonomic groups? Is that it? Or is this something new that I am not yet privy to?

I mean "color" as in what the local flora look like. It doesn't make sense for bright green grasshoppers to exist in a desert, for example: the grasses of the desert wouldn't be bright green, at least most of the time.

Some flora are green, orange, various shades of purple, black or grey, teal...compare that to Earth, where large terrestrial plants are, in nature, typically shades of green. Grass and trees can change color depending on environmental conditions, but slow color changes can be connected to the seasons passing. On Sagan 4, something like a katydid can, in the spring, immediately jump from a green tree to an orange tree to a purple tree. On Earth, the katydid would just be jumping between trees with different shades of green.

if an area that used to be dominated by purpleflora suddenly has very big blackflora trees, large fauna being bright purple doesn't make as much sense as it used to. Predators with decent color vision, or even light contrast detection, could pick them off easily in the daytime. The formation of a Dixon-Darwin-Vivus supercontinent has made Great American Interchange-esque extinctions inevitable, as heralded by the Argusraptor complex. That species complex in particular wiped out several organisms poorly matched to their environments. Flora spread by shrogs has, and can, rapidly change the floral composition of an area, or at least beach areas.

If it's made more explicit multiple flora colors are dominant in an particular habitat, it might encourage the spread of fauna which can change their colors, fauna which have different colors at different parts of their lifespans, color polymophism in a population, organisms which have one pattern that's good enough for mixed color environments, or organisms which only match one environment but are very good at staying in there.

A beaver-like fauna, for example, might require different adaptations, or levels of adaptations, for eating chitin-based crystalflora compared to woody blackflora like Chameleon Obsidishanks. Since digestibility type can change rapidly, though (multiple herbaceous plants can become woody "trees"), it might be more trouble than it's worth to mention floral types.

All of that makes much sense. I agree.

Fermi Temperate Beach has so many organisms it may be worthwhile to split it on the ecosystem page into the sub-habitats of the backshore, foreshore, and dunes, or at least the imprecise "inland", "near-water" and "in-water" designations. For example, Saltjorns explicitly live in the splash zone (near-water), while Mangots live in the dunes of the beach (inland) and Carnosprawls live in the water itself. For large fauna, going between the "inland" and "near-water" sub-habitats would probably be easy, and even the in-water if it has some ability to swim, but the difference would surely be important for flora and small fauna (e.g., Coastal Nectarworms and Hockels, the latter of which blend in with Twinkiiros and Twinkorals and nothing else)

If it is a good idea, it should be fairly easy to give parenthetical statements to the flora or sort the flora into habitat sub-type sections.

I figured I should make a note of this forum-side - I've been working on making it where the wiki presents random extant species at every logical opportunity, such as on general pages and even on the front page, in an effort to make it easier for newcomers to find potential starting points. Mostly because browsing the ecosystem page or the "extant" category is kinda brain-melting even for me.

I've also been working on introductions to extant groups, which each also show random representatives. The fauna one is the most complete: https://sagan4alpha.miraheze.org/wiki/Intro...to_Extant_Fauna

Ovifan has pitched in so far and I'd appreciate help from others as well, since I'm not very familiar with all the groups.

During my first pass through it, I saw thumbnail issues in the following sections.
Ketter, Bearhog, Gossalizard, Wingworms, Filtersquids, Dweller, Fee, Shockers, Swarmers, and Skuniks.

However, upon re-loading, different clades get thumbnail loading issues. I'll see if I can fix those, along with some typos or formatting issues I've spotted. I'll also work on adding inline links to some lineages mentioned.

I noticed some lineages were mentioned, but didn't have overview pages. I'd work on adding overview pages for them, at least for the smaller lineages, but it would help to know how big a clade has to get to justify a clade overview. Five species? Six? For comparison, there are only four emulsechoes, which are mentioned on your introduction page.

Why is “wooden bones” put in quotation marks? I would fix it, but I'd like to know the underlying logic.

Should the sections (e.g., senses) change for flora overview pages?
It would help with recordkeeping to note when pages were last updated, by Week and Generation.
“Ordinarily arthropods” Does this mean "typically ordinary arthropods" or "typically resemble arthropods"?

The thumbnail issues are due to a temporary bug with cargo tables, they will stop happening in a few hours. Don't touch them, it'll fix itself. @Coolsteph

OviFan and Nergali are also helping write, plenty of groups are compared to arthropods; you'll need to be more specific

Overview page creation and improvement is encouraged in general.

It’s been 2 hours, 20 minutes. I’ll say the first draft of the Ketters page is done. It’s a mess, but at least most of the sections are filled out. The Ketters lineage was much bigger than I expected, so I figured filling out the page would be shorter. I made a reasonable assumption that most Ketters did not have teeth from the rarity of portrayal in pictures, as well as the paucity of results from “Kitrii, teeth”, “Kitrii, tooth”, “Kitrii, chew”, “Kitrii, fangs”, and even “Kitrii, bite”.

I don't think Goutis really warrant an overview page, but they are distinctive enough to warrant a mention of an overview page for a bigger clade.

I have other inquiries, and Sagan 4 tasks in general, but I'll take a break for now.

I think Nobomaton was assumed to have teeth... The subject of teeth in Ketters is probably something to investigate by asking creators

I checked out the page for Gulpers, and it mentions a "pee pouch". It seems this was added recently. There are no other results on the wiki for "pee pouch". If this was decided outside of a specific organism page, it makes sense to make a citation for it.