HOME | DD
Amoeba-like-thingy — Mini Filter Feeder
Published: 2008-09-23 10:31:29 +0000 UTC; Views: 944; Favourites: 11; Downloads: 0
Redirect to original
Description
Ok, not a true filter feeder...It evolved from this creature:
[link]
Another bubble-algae dweller. While it often nips off straggly bits of bubble algae, it also eats particles of plant matter from the water. The muscle fibers that open and close its mouth are stringy and have spaces between them. They trap pieces of organic matter from the water that only become dislodged when the animal closes its mouth and eats them.
It lives much like the other tape-like herbivores, right down to using the bubble algae as a nursery for their offspring. They don't spend as much time up in the bubble algae as adults and take advantage of the floating algae below.
Related content
Comments: 5
woohoo! I love these guys so hard XD
good work again on the transparency! I was just noticing that you do it entirely with pencil and variation of one color!!! The back where you've got the indented groove looks particularly good
you could make a creature that ingests bubble algae and holds it in its body, getting some energy that way (photosynthesis?) or some other benefit ... camo? other chemical reaction?
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I was actually thinking of that earlier. But then I thought 'what would stop it from being digested?'. Its something that I might introduce gradually.
What I have done however is, now that its on a new time period, I have made some mold and floating algae work in harmony. The floating algae cling to the mold during their non-motile stage. When they die they provide food for the mold (drop off to the floor where the mold hyphae start to work on it). The mold is poisonous, so the animals that avoid the algae survive while the ones that don't die. The mold and algae of these particular species have become dependant on one another, but are found in shallow sea (not deep ocean like these tape harbivores).
Thanks for the favourite, and the suggestion. Its something I will definitely continue to think about.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Yeah! That's an interesting symbiosis. Is the info there just in development or already done?
You could certainly have sort of esophagus offshoots like crops that are transparent and hold algae, but alternately you could do something like gill fronds that harbor algae.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
After each cycle is finished, I always evolve the flora for the next cycle before I begin to evolve the fauna, so yes the info is already done. 
Those are always possibilities. Its got to the stage now where the animals are getting so large and active they need other means of taking in oxygen other than directly through their skin. Its very possible for some kind of algae storage to evolve from gills... or even for gills to evolve from a kind of filter-feeding or algae storage mechanism.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
yeah, i hadn't considered that the algae could be an oxygen source! you've thought of a lot that I haven't, especially of evolving the plants!!!
👍: 0 ⏩: 0