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Description
World-Craft: world-craft.deviantart.com/

Yes, I call them Nix... Nix eusocialis?

These creatures build elaborate underwater "castles" from mud, stones, twigs, leafs, etc. which are reinforced with worker saliva.

It contains living space for all members of the colony, food storage, egg and nymph chambers for the offspring, but the most important part, the queen chamber is dug deep into the river bed to protect her.

The mated pair finds a suitable spot to settle down, both founders of the new colony join forces to dig out the foundation for their underwater castle. the male is the queens first servant, confined in her chamber, getting ready to produce eggs, she is taken care of and fed by the male in the first week or two of her fertile period, then the coming generations of workers take over.

When the queen had produced a sufficiently large colony, she orders the workers to chase the original male out of the castle. He is then left to eitger die in the open or hope to find a wandering female or be accepted into another hive. The queen produces more fertile males and females as time goes on. she accepts her sons as her sexual partners, but she may also accept a wandering male to minimize genetical issues in her offspring.

It's a different story with the next generation of queens. they are kept infertile by pheromones which the current queen produces. The queen only stops producing this pheromone when she stops laying eggs. The "princesses," now freed from their "spell" begin to fight each other. the strongest (or luckiest) one chases out all her sisters, who become wandering females and must quickly find a wandering male to start another colony. if they fail, they are left to die in the open.

The males are short-lived and small, the females are long-lived and large, the workers are somewhere in between and soldiers are larger than workers.

as you can see, these creatures have four-tentacle-like palpi and four independently mobile jaws. the left and right jaw have a channel going through them which connects to saliva glands. Saliva glands in soldiers were modified to venom glands. the one bite from the soldier could numb the bitten limb of a human (if a human were to visit their home planet) for a few hours and it causes severe pain.

There are rows of defensive ejectable spikes between the 1st and 2nd and between the 2nd and 3rd dorsal plate.

These creatures have acartilaginous internal skeleton, the only truly hard parts of their body are the dorsal plates and jaws.

they have one pair of small ocelli only able to distinguish light from shadow, and a pair of larger complex camera eyes.

These creatures are small and herbivorous, the workers cut pieces of water plants and bring them back to the colony.

Their homeorld is covered with lush forests, sort of like the Earth in the Carboniferous period. Biomass falls into rivers and provides an inexhaustible supply of building material for these tiny creatures, Thousands of species of these animals can be found all over the globe.

There are giant samps an river complexes all over the land, the climate is very hot and humid. Their home planet has a thicker atmosphere than earth and the weather is also more violent than ours. Winds are stronger and faster, storms are more frequent and last longer. High concentration of oxygen causes massive forest fires (usually initiated by a lightning strike) which help to return nutrients back into the soil. Many local plants internalised forest fires into their reprouction cycle, because they produce fruits which are impervious to everything except fire. Fire comes, burns the parent down, the nut shell weakens, and the offspring grows on a fertilized soil.

Description
World-Craft: world-craft.deviantart.com/

Yes, I call them Nix... Nix eusocialis?

These creatures build elaborate underwater "castles" from mud, stones, twigs, leafs, etc. which are reinforced with worker saliva.

It contains living space for all members of the colony, food storage, egg and nymph chambers for the offspring, but the most important part, the queen chamber is dug deep into the river bed to protect her.

The mated pair finds a suitable spot to settle down, both founders of the new colony join forces to dig out the foundation for their underwater castle. the male is the queens first servant, confined in her chamber, getting ready to produce eggs, she is taken care of and fed by the male in the first week or two of her fertile period, then the coming generations of workers take over.

When the queen had produced a sufficiently large colony, she orders the workers to chase the original male out of the castle. He is then left to eitger die in the open or hope to find a wandering female or be accepted into another hive. The queen produces more fertile males and females as time goes on. she accepts her sons as her sexual partners, but she may also accept a wandering male to minimize genetical issues in her offspring.

It's a different story with the next generation of queens. they are kept infertile by pheromones which the current queen produces. The queen only stops producing this pheromone when she stops laying eggs. The "princesses," now freed from their "spell" begin to fight each other. the strongest (or luckiest) one chases out all her sisters, who become wandering females and must quickly find a wandering male to start another colony. if they fail, they are left to die in the open.

The males are short-lived and small, the females are long-lived and large, the workers are somewhere in between and soldiers are larger than workers.

as you can see, these creatures have four-tentacle-like palpi and four independently mobile jaws. the left and right jaw have a channel going through them which connects to saliva glands. Saliva glands in soldiers were modified to venom glands. the one bite from the soldier could numb the bitten limb of a human (if a human were to visit their home planet) for a few hours and it causes severe pain.

There are rows of defensive ejectable spikes between the 1st and 2nd and between the 2nd and 3rd dorsal plate.

These creatures have acartilaginous internal skeleton, the only truly hard parts of their body are the dorsal plates and jaws.

they have one pair of small ocelli only able to distinguish light from shadow, and a pair of larger complex camera eyes.

These creatures are small and herbivorous, the workers cut pieces of water plants and bring them back to the colony.

Their homeorld is covered with lush forests, sort of like the Earth in the Carboniferous period. Biomass falls into rivers and provides an inexhaustible supply of building material for these tiny creatures, Thousands of species of these animals can be found all over the globe.

There are giant samps an river complexes all over the land, the climate is very hot and humid. Their home planet has a thicker atmosphere than earth and the weather is also more violent than ours. Winds are stronger and faster, storms are more frequent and last longer. High concentration of oxygen causes massive forest fires (usually initiated by a lightning strike) which help to return nutrients back into the soil. Many local plants internalised forest fires into their reprouction cycle, because they produce fruits which are impervious to everything except fire. Fire comes, burns the parent down, the nut shell weakens, and the offspring grows on a fertilized soil.