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Description

Slugbugs are eusocial cooperative organisms that form scattered communities in the red jungle. They normally form camps inside of the remains of dead worm trees and use their tubular skeleton as protection from predators. Despite their size, they have highly complex and large ganglia for their small size. This allows them to have rudimentary communication with one another and give complex messages to the rest of the camp. Modified skin scales inside the rings lining the front rostrum of the slugbug allows them to create undulating patterns to signal other slugbugs. These green rings grow and shrink when stimulated which can signal a variety of messages to other slugbugs. The rings can even be an indication of which camp the slugbug originates from as often they have unique ring patterns. They have a unique behavior of growing walls of oxygen autotrophic organisms called erinoids inside the nests. The slugbugs go out and harvest dead organic matter from carcasses and dying worm trees and bring it back to the camp. They will feed bits and pieces to the erinoids and in return, they feed off of the erinoid. They often run into competition with other camps over carcasses which can lead to aggressive behavior. While camps will often tolerate each other, sometimes raids can happen where a swarm of slugbugs can come in and steal erinoids from other camps to eat. Unlike ant nests on earth, camps created by slugbugs hardly last more than 5 months as they are often attacked by predators or succumb to intense hurricane winds on Agrona. In regard to its flight patterns, the similarity between the body shape of a slugbug and hummingbirds is not coincidence. This is an example of convergent evolution, one main difference being that the slugbug doesn’t have to expend nearly as much energy as hummingbirds do because of Agrona’s thicker atmosphere and can afford a smaller body size.

Description

Slugbugs are eusocial cooperative organisms that form scattered communities in the red jungle. They normally form camps inside of the remains of dead worm trees and use their tubular skeleton as protection from predators. Despite their size, they have highly complex and large ganglia for their small size. This allows them to have rudimentary communication with one another and give complex messages to the rest of the camp. Modified skin scales inside the rings lining the front rostrum of the slugbug allows them to create undulating patterns to signal other slugbugs. These green rings grow and shrink when stimulated which can signal a variety of messages to other slugbugs. The rings can even be an indication of which camp the slugbug originates from as often they have unique ring patterns. They have a unique behavior of growing walls of oxygen autotrophic organisms called erinoids inside the nests. The slugbugs go out and harvest dead organic matter from carcasses and dying worm trees and bring it back to the camp. They will feed bits and pieces to the erinoids and in return, they feed off of the erinoid. They often run into competition with other camps over carcasses which can lead to aggressive behavior. While camps will often tolerate each other, sometimes raids can happen where a swarm of slugbugs can come in and steal erinoids from other camps to eat. Unlike ant nests on earth, camps created by slugbugs hardly last more than 5 months as they are often attacked by predators or succumb to intense hurricane winds on Agrona. In regard to its flight patterns, the similarity between the body shape of a slugbug and hummingbirds is not coincidence. This is an example of convergent evolution, one main difference being that the slugbug doesn’t have to expend nearly as much energy as hummingbirds do because of Agrona’s thicker atmosphere and can afford a smaller body size.