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Ferropaddle
(Rubigoflora remus)

Creator: Bufforpington
Ancestor: Pionferruses
Habitat: Maineiac Water Table
Size: 10 cm tall Fronds, 50 cm diameter networks
Diet: Lithotroph (Iron)
Reproduction: Sexual, Conjugation, Asexual, Fragmentation

The ferropaddle is descended from a group of pionferruses that grew too far down and ended up in Maineiac Water Table. Upon doing this, they quickly took advantage of the large amount of free-floating iron oxides that resulted from the diamiarm's predation of Iron fauna. The ferropaddle's shoot has become thin and armor-less in order to better absorb free-floating iron. However, it cannot do this on its own, and requires assistance from its rustmold symbiont. The rustmold symbiont, Fungiferrus remucola grows on the surface of the paddle and redoxes the iron oxides that drifts in the water column. The ferropaddle then uses the iron and some of the energy to grow its iron-coated roots and nodes. The ferropaddle also uses the iron to create a support rod inside of its frond called a gladius. Because the rod is kept inside of the organism, it oxidizes very slowly, and thus requires less iron to maintain. The rustmold symbiont will also coat the surface network of the ferropaddle, smothering it and making it less suceptable to oxidization. The ferropaddle will also absorb iron directly from the ground like its ancestor with its underground network. because of their low nutrient intake, they tend to grow very slowly.

Ferropaddles have a new, sexual means of reproduction. This takes the form of conjugation, in which two individuals will fuse their networks and send their newly-evolved gametes into this conjunction and fuse into a zygote. A new individual will then grow from the zygote. Ferropaddles can also reproduce via fragmentation like their ancestors.

This has to go though a semi-aquatic transitional form before it can jump straight to aquatic.

Well crap. I thought this species could just return to the water since its evolutionary line never really left the water. The irontangle needed to live in puddles to survive, and ironetworks and pionferruses all lived in soil, and soil often has water stuck to it, providing the ironnetworks and pionferruses with something to breathe through. It's also never mentioned how the ironetwork ever adapted to surviving without water, so its air-breathing status is quite dubious. However, I guess they just breathe air now because Hydro made them completely terrestrial out of the blue.

It's not like I can make a transitional species anyways due to the water table being completely submerged. Oh well, looks like it's time to nuke this species from orbit. Fortunately this won't have too big of an impact on the cave ecosystem I'm trying to make in Maineiac Water Table. I'll just have to change up some descriptions.

Am I nuking this, then? It does look like it's ancestor was made non aquatic by mistake?

Go ahead. Making this thing was clearly a mistake. I even wanted to change the text beneath the title to ‘delet this’.

Could this be salvaged if it has some non aquatic cave environments added?

No, that won't be possible. This species is made to live exclusively in aquatic environments. Not to mention that it inaccurately portrays rustmolds as organisms that redox iron oxide instead of converting Fe2+ to Fe3+.

Also in general the species in the pic should be obvious without reading the description on which one you are showing.