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Kinble (Flumencopia bullavillus)
Creator: Jarlaxle
Ancestor: Gillking
Habitat: Darwin Subtropical Undersea Meadow, Dixon-Fermi Subtropical Sea, East Dixon Subtropical Undersea Meadow, East Orpington Subtropical Undersea Meadow, Hydro-Krakow Tropical Coast, North Vailnoff Subtropical Ocean, South Vailnoff Subtropical Ocean, Talon-Orpington Tropical Undersea Meadow, Vailnoff-Flisch-Rhino Tropical Ocean, West Darwin Tropical Coast, West Darwin Tropical Undersea Meadow, West Hydro Subtropical Coast
Size: 1 cm Hexagonal Zooids, 3 cm Pentagonal zooids, 6 cm to 3 m Zoon
Support: Soft-Bodied (Hydrostatic Skeleton)
Diet: Planktivore (<2 mm)
Respiration: Passive (External Gills)
Thermoregulation: Ectotherm
Reproduction: Sexual (male & female, broadcast spawning, live birth)

The Kinble has split from its Gillking ancestor, expanding its habitat West of Vailnoff Ocean. By re-evolving an internal separation of skin, muscle, and gut tissue that their ancestors have previously lost, and by adapting the skin oils and muscle tissue along the anal fingers to transfer nutrition and oxygen, they were able to roll and fold their digestive system. Beyond making better use of nutrition, it has enabled them to evolve the shorter and stockier variety which was ultimately able to bring the gill arms and anal fingers into the same plane. As the gill arms were already adapted to absorbing nutrition, whenever the anal fingers accidentally reached their neighbor's gills instead of merging anal finger to anal finger, they were able to have a healthier flow of nutrition from the anal fingers output to the gills input.

Their gills and anal fingers now form a single transportation network, growing their gill branches in a cup-like shape to hold onto and fuse with their neighbor's bulbous anal fingers, allowing them to efficiently share nutrition and oxygen across the colony. With 12 exceptions, each zooid will form a hexagon, made of 3 input cups and 3 output bulbs. In the attempt to create a sphere, they form a Goldberg polyhedron, which means they will consistently have 12 pentagonal members, known as Foundlings, and each Foundling has a free connection. half of the Foundlings have a free gill arm that grows outwards from the colonial bubble to add to the overall oxygen supply of the colony. The remaining half of the Foundlings have a free anal finger that grows inwards, storing supplies and acting as feeders for newborns, who will spend more time within the colony and differentiating the anal arm before joining.

Like their ancestors, males will constantly spray gametes, where most will make their way to the female's reproductive organs, which will constantly give live birth to new members within the colony. When two mature colonies meet each other, the colonies will contract and expand in rhythm and attempt to follow each other in circles and exchange their gametes in the process of their mating dance. Unlike their ancestor, the resulting brood will be maintained as distinct from the rest of the colony, coming together around one of the feeders. When ready, they will meet outside of the colony and form the colonial juvenile form, each made of 12 pentagonal foundings forming a dodecahedron.

To better coordinate mating and overall locomotion, they've evolved their eyes to gather internal and external visual cues. Evolving from bulging photoreceptor domes, the eyes have inverted inwards from the anterior and posterior ends, practically separating into 4 simple cup eyes, a front-facing pair outside of the colony and a back-facing pair towards the center of the colony. This allows them to instantly respond to a motion beginning at the opposite end of the colony, a reaction made faster through the use of color cones in the eyes and brightly colored underbellies.

This post has been edited by Jarlaxle: Jun 4 2023, 06:09 PM

Hey, it’s “sex orb 2.0”, I was wondering when somebody would make an evo of these

The only thing I’d wonder about is the transition from only using the anal fingers for colony connections to using the gills as well, perhaps these evolved from a species that could do both.

QUOTE (Cube67 @ Feb 15 2023, 02:47 PM)

Hey, it’s “sex orb 2.0”, I was wondering when somebody would make an evo of these The only thing I’d wonder about is the transition from only using the anal fingers for colony connections to using the gills as well, perhaps these evolved from a species that could do both.

I'd imagine accidental gill-to-anal toe contact happens all the time, especially while reconfiguring to add new members or after an attack where they lost a few. I think the existing gillking gills should be able to absorb oxygen and minerals into the blood. The half-gen intermediary was probably a gillking with muscular anal toes and fatty oil glands turning the accident beneficiary, maybe even inducing some positive stimuli for having good nutrition and oxygen flow over the touching gill.

This post has been edited by Jarlaxle: Feb 15 2023, 08:11 AM

Just listing things here so they don't get buried on Discord.

- Habitat has biomes that either don't exist anymore and/or are on the other side of Wright
- "Filter Feeding" on its own is invalid and should be elaborated on
- Plane is the correct word, plain refers to something that is bland or original.
- There needs to be an a in the part with "Goldberg polyhedron
- The second sentence in the first paragraph and first sentence in the second paragraph should be broken down
- the way the gills and eyes are described are weird/confusing and may need to be reworded

Oh it seems that the habitat was already fixed

QUOTE (Oceansky @ May 23 2023, 10:41 PM)

Oh it seems that the habitat was already fixed

Fixed the description as well, with the exception of sentence length.

I prefer to avoid stubby chopped up sentences when I can, I do that when a mod asks because it implies it's required to get it accepted (there's no clear separation between general advice and requirements), but usually that just result in worst off descriptions that are both less cohesive and take away from the flow and readability.

Undersea Forest, Coast, and Undersea Meadow are all three different flavors, so I think one should be removed since this is already in Reefs and the Sunlight Zone

And if anything, I think the way the second sentence of the first paragraph is written now, I think it's weirder to read than if it were two sentences, or just shortened/rewritten.

The next sentence also seems like it's missing context, possibly because of how the previous sentence is written, or because what this sentence is talking about isn't stated at the start.

Should "Foundlings" be capitalized? I feel like it should be, but I'd like to hear from others about this.

"In the attempt to create a sphere..." This sentence is too long.

Sorry that I'm posting so many different things separately, I'm just pointing out things as I go along, and I'm not bothering to create another tab for this. I think everything else is fine though. Oh, and yeah I probably should now, I still have a second tab open from when I was looking at Tesseleaves a while back, but never posted the review and still have it sitting because of a run-on sentence.

Please make a new tab for this. Posting over and over like this is spam and is EXTREMELY frowned upon on forum communities.

Removed the reef and the undersea forest from the habitats, as they'd do better in open habitats. Fixed some of the sentences so that they make sense despite the chop job, mostly by reiterating and restating their subject matters an absurdly redundant number of times. Again, chopping down sentences to less flowing ones that break context is clearly not an improvement.

I’m not sure how realistic forming this sphere is.

QUOTE (HethrJarrod @ Jun 5 2023, 11:13 AM)

I’m not sure how realistic forming this sphere is.

This was covered in discord, but just to cover the points here for future checklists:

1. The sphere is ancestral


2. Oceansky brought up colonial rotifers as a RL example


3. There are advantages in it. A sphere has advantages: increasing the collective size for one thing, also possibly counter intuitively in some ways increasing the feeding envelope for a filter feeder that depends on water current. Since a chain is likely to be stretched to be in the direction of the current most of the zooids would be within the same small window of incoming current bringing in food, while in a sphere it is only true for 2 zoids at any given time


This post has been edited by Jarlaxle: Jun 10 2023, 04:02 PM