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QUOTE (Coolsteph @ Dec 28 2022, 04:36 PM)

Subjective Review The texturing in the background is similar to your standard Hydromancerx swirly-watercolor background, but grainier, suggesting sand. The coloring is pleasant. — Preliminary Review It may be a symbiote with its host flora, but that doesn't explain what nutrients it uses. Does it use simple sugars, other compounds, or both? Support: It appears to have cell walls. Respiration: Passive Diffusion seems the most likely at this scale, given its complexity. Thermoregulation: At this scale, it would surely be “ectothermic”. In retrospect, Hexpouruses have a terribly underdeveloped description for.a genus group. Various  important traits in the merged genus groups aren’t even mentioned in its description. It may be best to ask TheBigL to update it, although, as it is a microbe genus group and those rarely get attention, it’s not high-urgency. I noticed the capitalization of species names is inconsistent. “Ancestor however”: “Ancestor; however” “To bring in” “which bring in” is better. “ “In its oral groove”: “Into its oral groove” A quick check suggests the plural is “flagella” or “flagellums”, although “flagella” seems more standard. “To help”-> “which help” “Extreme temperature”: “extreme temperatures”. “Safe inside the flora”: this needs a comma at the end. “This doesn’t cost the flora much so it can keep growing healthy”. What does “it” refer to? Can you clarify this? “They are not harmful to their host”: if it has multiple host species, the grammar should be adjusted. “Endophytes”: this should not be capitalized. “Endophytes they”: Endophytes, they. “Species they”: Species, they. “Its hot”: It’s hot. “Loose”: lose. “These pours”: Do you mean “pores”, or “‘pours”, as a shortened form for Symbiopouruses or its relatives? “While other species” The “while” doesn’t make sense. The easiest solution is to omit the “while”. “Fruits, flowers”: the simplest solution is adding an “and” after the comma. “Spores. Thus” -> “spores, thus”. Does “them” refer to the frequency of spreading events in the flora, or there microbes? I recommend reading the descriptions out loud to check for choppy sentences. The Oatmeal provides a humorous guide to punctuation, though it mostly teaches about the use of semicolons. (https://www.theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon) Suggestions Since this is a genus group, I would recommend adding a little more detail, such as elaborating on the chemicals it uses.

Fixed.

Note these are Endophyte clones so if anyone knows more that i can add to it please let me know. I just saw a video about them and though we should have this niche on Sagan 4 too.

The ones fulfilling different roles should be different genus groups ideally of unrelated microbes. A genus group should only fill one ecological niche and not hog niches away from other submitters.

QUOTE (Disgustedorite @ Jan 11 2023, 11:08 AM)

The ones fulfilling different roles should be different genus groups ideally of unrelated microbes. A genus group should only fill one ecological niche and not hog niches away from other submitters.

Well it specializes in Purple Flora (and some blackflora that apply)

No, I mean how some species make hormones and others do other things. Those should all be different genus groups. Right now this is like making a genus for all gut microbes, when even ignoring lesser taxonomic differences, gut microbes are in multiple domains in real life.

QUOTE (Disgustedorite @ Jan 11 2023, 11:50 AM)

No, I mean how some species make hormones and others do other things. Those should all be different genus groups. Right now this is like making a genus for all gut microbes, when even ignoring lesser taxonomic differences, gut microbes are in multiple domains in real life.

Well it is left kinda open ended to where it could apply to any or not. Like lets say you want to evolve a flora that didn't use this symbiosis then we could say it didn't for that species.

That's not the problem. The problem is that this is the microbial equivalent to putting all arboreal insects, including tree-dwelling beetles, stick bugs, katydids, and leafcutter ants, in a single genus group.

Why not make them specialized to achieve just one broad and useful function? Since plant parasites are somewhat underdeveloped compared to real life, making these help prevent water loss might be enough of a function.

Apparently the niches of real microbial endophytes that exist in real life are already taken by nitrocycles, and these don't even resemble any plant symbiotes?

What's stopping Sagan 4 from having two lineages of microbial endophytes? With the sheer variety of flora and likely different biochemistry and anatomy, this seems, if anything, even more plausible than in real life. As for the nitrocycles, perhaps those could be soft-retconned by creating a more realistic descendant to replace it, although I believe it would be unprecedented in the Alpha timeline to make a genus group extinct.

wait a minute, holy shit, these are huge??

I don't think it's even remotely plausible for these ecological roles to come about from macroscopic, predatory, cellular fauna like Hexpouruses. Even as 3 separate entries, one for each niche. This puts it into the territory of a complete rewrite into a fundamentally different organism, which is grounds for rejection.

I was gonna give it a bit and wait for input from others but more and more just came up and up that I gave up on it completely; I think this is completely unsalvageable for the following reasons:

- Too large to fit inside plants as described even if they shrunk by 10x compared to the ancestor
- It is incredibly unlikely that large active predatory cellular fauna would evolve into the 3 roles described, which are of largely sedentary and much much smaller bacteria and fungi
- The genus is too broad in ecological niche
- Does not appear to be based on research of actual organisms doing the things described, thus resulting in it being overly vague and likely missing things that they would need in order to function (a problem also present in nitrocycles, by the way)
- Much of the text is copied from this video word for word, and while it could be rewritten in hydro's own words, well...
- Fixing all of the above issues would require a redesign and rewrite so fundamental that it would become a completely different organism, like turning a submission of a sauceback into a submission of an obsiditree, and we're right at the end of a gen that's drawn on way too long, so it really isn't worth it.

So I'm going ahead and rejecting it.

Was discussed and debated on discord too so I am resigning this to the graveyard.