#biology reference

[barelyacademia]

here's a nifty little chart with all of the major organelles. If you're studying for exams, please know I'm rooting for you!

find more at @barelyacademia

[jayrockin]

Here’s how to charge your phone when it’s alive, full of guts, and you are a crab alien who lives in the sea. Scuds are amphibious, comfortable breathing on land as long as their gills stay damp, but they spend most of their time in saltwater intertidal zones. This makes human-style technology powered by heat and electricity improbable, so scuds never really developed that-- instead, animal husbandry and artificial selection developed to the point that extremely sophisticated manufactured technology can be created through the surgical combination of extremely derived sedentary animals, alga, and bacteria.

So what powers a phone full of guts? The simplest form of food: sugar water with essential nutrients added. The charging cable also deals with the outgoing (mostly liquid) waste from digestion and the nitrogenous waste from the phone's metabolic processes.

Ironically, while humans have trouble bringing our electrical technology underwater, scuds have trouble bringing their biotechnology onto land. Even with a lung attachment, biotech innards have a high risk of desiccation and temperature shock on land. For especially large or delicate pieces of technology, the lack of underwater buoyancy can cause internal distention and damage.

PATREON | STORE | Runaway to the Stars

[a-typical]

Complete Human Genome Sequenced for First Time In Major Breakthrough

The final eight percent of the human genome, which contains immune response genes and the keys to our big brain, has been mapped. x

Scientists have mapped an entire unbroken human genome for the first time, a milestone that completes the groundbreaking work started by the Human Genome Project decades ago, according to a motherlode of new studies published in Science and other journals on Thursday. The final stubborn gaps of the genome, representing about eight percent of this human blueprint, were filled by the Telomere to Telomere (T2T) consortium, an international team consisting of dozens of scientists. The achievement opens the door to a host of new discoveries about the genetic variation between people, the evolution of our species, and the treatment of genetic diseases.

“It turns out that these genes are incredibly important for adaptation,” Eichler said. “They contain immune response genes that help us to adapt and survive infections and plagues and viruses. They contain genes that are important in terms of helping us detoxify agents and they are very important in terms of predicting drug response.”

“But perhaps most interesting to me is they carry genes that make us uniquely human,” he continued. “About half of the genes that are thought to make our bigger brain, compared to the other apes, come specifically from these regions, which were absent in the original Human Genome Project-”

Working with just one version of the genome simplified the process of mapping out the remaining euchromatic genes, though the researchers acknowledged the limitations of working with one specific ancestral heritage. To get a better read on the incredible diversity of humans, the T24 consortium is partnering with the Human Pangenome Reference Consortium to fully map genomes from different lineages that will reveal, in unprecedented detail, how all humans are related to each other.

[tiredbiostudent]

so I’m doing a lecture on marine mammal evolution

[spearxwind]

snaps wide awake out of completely nowhere thinking “are my ocs too weird”

[critter-wizard]

silly lil creecher

[hordemama]

heres some more detailed shrimp-faced rabbits as a treat. ignore the quick exoskeleton model it is UUUUGLY. i have a much better (albeit older) ref for endo and exo +guts refs.

[hrokkall]

Inscryption AU everything is the same except Magnificus has tube-shaped eyes like owls do so the challenger can’t fit his eye in their socket to see the paint on the clock so now none of the Scrybes can escape

[euripideez-nuts]

de humani corporis fabrica libri septem (on the fabric of the human body) // anatomical illustrations of andreas vesalius (1514-1564)

[incyrayinc]

Deceiver ontogeny (pretty fuckin' alien)

Deceivers have a really weird asymmetric life cycle different from that of other sophonts, and more closely resembling the min-maxed life cycles of some insects. They speedrun intelligence at the cost of pretty much everything. They're also solitary and VIOLENTLY territorial, so parental care, while intense, is indirect- more like a solitary bee or wasp building a nest and stocking it with food for the larva.

The nest doesn't actually have to be a tube, this was just my first concept. More likely, they'd build a bunker library.

Deceivers have a superprecocial, asymmetric, min-maxed ontogeny, particularly with regards to their minds. Deceivers hatch with highly developed hardware running software in a blank-slate state, and proceed to consume educational material stored in the incubation tube in a non-stop, caterpillar-like manner. Newly hatched Deceivers are less like newborn sophonts of other species, and more like a blank computer booted up for the first time. Personality development does not even BEGIN until AFTER hatching from the tube, and Deceivers themselves do not tend to think of tube-bound larvae as people, but rather, more like the potentiality of a person.

Deceivers are weird among sophonts, as although they are naturally solitary (and in a wild state would be so territorial as to kill and eat each other on sight when not mating), they have incredible language acquisition and usage abilities normally involved in their hunting strategy. Deceivers also use this ability in their only parental care behavior- the practice of constructing bunker nests of some kind to house larvae, with accompanying supplies of educational material to last for YEARS and sufficiently prepare the larva for life. Subadult and adult Deceivers posses a strong urge to compile and collect knowledge, as building a sufficient store with which to raise a larva requires YEARS of work, enough to assemble a library.

Literacy and language are so crucial for Deceivers that they literally cannot successfully reproduce without such means to transmit knowledge, and they will preserve some means of written communication even forced to survive in the harshest conditions. They do not invent their own writing or other language systems, however; Deceivers instead adopt those used by prey.

Deceiver nests are goldmines for archeology, as they tend to preserve massive repositories of information within. Intensely detailed records of culture, language, scientific knowledge- all stashed away in what is often an underground, fortified bunker library built to withstand the tests of time and even the largest burrowing monsters. Not only that, but a Deceiver nest almost always contains means to LEARN several languages, allowing for an incredible wealth of translation to become possible.

Extended image descriptions below the read more/cut!

Extended image descriptions:

[ID: Image 2:

Infographic showing Deceiver lifecycle from incubation to adulthood. A crude sketch shows a small tentacle monster (larval Deceiver) next to a pair of human feet/legs, showing how it is similar in size to a small cat. A note pointing to it from the main infrographic reads: 'All this, for larva.'

The main infographic is a timeline graph showing the phases of a Deceiver's life cycle, along with the rate of its growth in size and intelligence. Intelligence is shown to consistently increase rapidly before plateauing in early adulthood, while size grows very slowly before speeding up dramatically in the late teenage years. The incubation period lasts for about 3 years, after which the tube-bound 'baby' stage lasts for between 3 and 6 years. The juvenile stage that happens after the Deceiver hatches from the tube lasts for 10 years, and the subadult stage 6 years. In total, the whole ontogengy from egg to adult takes between 19 and 21 years.

Accompanying notes on each stage read: '(Incubation) Incubation is super long to basically skip early childhood for maximum efficiency.' '(Tube/baby) Intelligence starts out comparable to a human 8 yr old; every waking moment is spent learning to speedrun language and survival tactic acquisition. They don’t even waste time when sleeping. Hatchling Deceiver dreams are spent analyzing yesterday’s data. They are very mechanical at this stage, with no personality whatsoever- only Learning, like a beby neural net. If all available learning material has been learned before 6 years, the larva will enter a state of semi-hibernation non-stop eating and sleeping to grow as fast as possible, as the goal of this stage is learning, not growth, and is wasted if not spent learning. 3 years is the minimum that would occur if no learning material was provided, and the larva brain detects it is not receiving new information.' '(Juvenile) This is the true childhood stage, despite the fact that a Deceiver ‘child’ has the intelligence of an early human teen. They are smart enough to do a lot of clever things, but severely lacking in lived experience and wisdom. Despite the higher intelligence, this stage should be treated like a human child. Juvenile is the most dangerous stage of Deceivers life; it is when they are mastering survival and VERY vulnerable to being killed by prey. Juvenile Deceivers are very smart- but also very gullible and prone to making mistakes. Most Deceivers die as juveniles, much like with other wild animals…' '(Sudadult) This is the teen stage, and should be treated as such- again despite the higher intelligence. Deceivers speedrun smartness during early life, though by this point it plateaus with just a few fine tunings left, much like humans. Basic intelligence is really high (human adult-like), but decision making is still pretty dumb. The end of this is also the stage at which Deceiver puberty happens, which consists mostly of rapid growth, followed by gonad development (they start growing snail lovedarts and internal gonads- this part lags way behind because all their energy has been spent speedrunning intelligence and wisdom).'

Another, cruder version of this chart has different notes pertaining to the Deceiver character Veri's early life, with notes reading: '(tube-mid juvenile) Veri lives like a normal Deceiver.' '(mid juvenile-late subadult) Veri is abducted and tormented by an illegal beast-baiting/venatio ring. Veri escapes by killing their master and torching the arena. How long this lasts subject to change.' '(late subadult-early adulthood) Veri attempts to return to normalcy, but cannot due to their evaluation that causing harm is evil… and their need to eat souls conflicts with that.' '(early adulthood) Veri meets Leo (who initially assumed them a threat and tries to kill them), an adventurer who decides to help Veri upon learning Veri’s been trying to find a way to survive without causing net harm.'

An additional lifecycle chart shows the ontogeny of a human, with the many phases labeled: (infant) 0-2.5 yrs - baby; 2.5-5 yrs - toddler; (kid) 5-10 yrs - kid; 10-13 yrs - older kid; (subadult) 13-15 yrs - pre-teen; 15-18 yrs - teen; 18 yrs - legal adult; (adult) 18-20+ yrs - adult. Accompanying notes read: 'The human has a pretty steady growth rate in both size and intelligence. Deceivers do not have this; their ontogeny is asymmetric and min/maxed, growing slowly through early life, but increasing in intelligence rapidly from the get-go, before plateauing and FINALLY starting to grow quickly. They stay small for a long time, are freakishly smart compared to a human of that age, then suddenly growth spurt like a caterpillar once they reach critical smartness mass. The whole ontogenic setup is geared to become smart enough to kill a sophont as fast as possible, with as little risk of making a dumb kid mistake As Possible.' END ID]

[barelyacademia]

so very very late, but that's who I am. Here's part two of mendelian genetics. I have some separate pedigree examples that I'll post separate so you can use them for practice. happy learning!

[octoagentmiles]

For the character bingo, how about Pearl?

porl <3

I really hope we get more Pearl content in the upcoming seasons!! she's slowly becoming an odd fav lol. a casual blorbo, if you will. a side skrunkle, mayhaps? I don't know what language I'm speaking, someone stop me- /j

okay but fr Above and Beyond has opened my eyes to her for great potential 👀 ever since I first saw this promo:

I KNEW she was about to get good. I foresaw it, like a vision ✨

AnB has been working hard to strengthen the series' female characters, and in my opinion Pearl is a great example of this. She used to simply be Shellington's sister, and Peri's mother. Now she is still those things, and more! In her introduction they said she was a scientist, but they didn't do anything to show that; but in AnB we see her out in the field, getting hands on and dirty, and forming her own relationships (with Dashi and Kwazii), while still being a responsible mother at the same time. I can't name many characters quite like her.

(and we all know how the main series treats their moms- reduced to poor sweet or nagging ladies doomed to only chant the phrase: "✨✨ That's Nice, Dear :) ✨✨" for all of eternity).

I also honestly adore her design too, how she's clearly Shellington's sister, but doesn't just look like a genderbent version of him (*cough* Bianca *cough* I'm sorry, I know they're twins, but still 😭). She's also a little bit androgynous?? imo anyway, which I really like.

[alithographica]

Leggy.

Transcript below the cut.

Vertebrate Foot Morphology

An animal’s speed is determined by its stride length (how much distance it can cover in one walk or run cycle) and the rate at which it moves. To increase their speed, some animals have evolved to walk on their toes rather than their full foot. This increases the overall length of the leg, allowing for a longer stride.

[Illustration: Three skeletal legs are shown. One is labeled plantigrade, and has the full foot on the ground. The next is digitigrade, and rests on its toes. The final is unguligrade, and rests on one hoof. They are rainbow-colored, with each color indicating which bones are which per the following guide:]

Bones of the hindleg (from top/hip to bottom/toes) :

Femur Patella (kneecap) Tibia Fibula Tarsals Metatarsals Phalanges

Plantigrade: Full foot on the ground, from toe to heel. Very stable and able to carry a lot of weight. 

Examples: Bears, rodents, humans

Digitigrade: Walk with their toes on the ground and the heel raised up. Allows for quicker and quieter movement than plantigrade feet.

Example: Cats, dogs, birds Unguligrade: Walk on the tips of one or a few toes, which are enclosed in a hoof.

Examples: Horses, deer, cows It’s also possible for an animal to be between foot types. Elephants walk on their toes, but bear most of their weight on a fat pad below their low heels, making them semi-digitigrade/semi-plantigrade.

[destroyusall]

Neurology of Denizens

Let’s kick of the end of the year with some UTb lore, yeah?

This image is a ‘bloomage scan’ of a denizen. Denizens lack central brains, and instead function based off of a network of nerves that eventually form bundles called ‘bloomages’. This bloomage, though it serves the same purpose of a brain, does not always reside within the head, as shown by bloomage being in the chest of the depicted subject. This means that denizens can suffer massive damage to / lose their head entirely, yet live / be intact enough to reattach it and recover.

[o-craven-canto]

Spec biology: typology, seminal works, references

A taxonomy of the main types of speculative biology for the benefit (I hope) of beginners, with examples of the earliest/most influential works and references hopefully useful to make your own. Full list below the cut; will be expanded over time. (Please contact me if a link is down; I’ll try to keep them updated.)

0a. General references: useful for any kind of specbio project. The Speculative Evolution Forum, Laws of Evolution (Pavel Volkov, 2005), Furahan Biology and Allied Matters (Gert van Dijk, 2008, ongoing), Spec Evo Wiki Tutorials (yours truly, ca. 2014; include planets, ecology, physiology, naming, &c), Chase for a Blue Chimera (Volkov & Kilyachkov, ca. 2015; general treatise on SpecBio) Worldbuilding Resources, Alien Biosphere Evolution (Phrenotopia, 2018, ongoing), The Equations of Life (Charles Cockell, 2018), Alien Biospheres (Biblaridion, 2019, ongoing), Exocosm (Abbydon, 2020, ongoing)

0b. Naming: Forming classical scientific names (Grensted & Bradley, 1958); Dictionary of Greek/Latin Roots (Donald Borror, 1960); Guide to Naming (me, ca. 2014); Guide to (Vernacular) Names (Dr Nitwhite, 2021), The Specposium Guide to Taxonomy (Henry Thomas, 2024), Common taxonomic affixes (Wiki)

0c. Planets and climate: Geoff’s Climate Cookbook (2006), Worldbuilding Videos (Artifexian, 2014, ongoing), Worldbuilding (Winchell Cheung), Worldbuilding Pasta (2019, ongoing)

Online textbooks on Biology, Chemistry, Geosciences, Astronomy; list of Biological Strategies

1. Future evolution: extending evolution into our future, imagining descendants of the species that live now on Earth; often the extinction of humanity is assumed to clear way to natural processes.

Key works: After Man (Dougal Dixon, 1981), The Future is Wild (multiple, 2002, TV; video), Neocene (Pavel Volkov, 2005), Demain: Les Animaux du Futur (Boulay & Steyer, 2015; original in French)

References: Future Evolution (Peter Ward, 2001), The Life and Death of Planet Earth (Ward & Brownlee, 2004), Our future Earth: how the planet will change in the next 100,000 years (Curt Stager, 2011), Supercontinent scenarios (EarthSky, 2019), Life Under a Dying Sun (me, 2020), Future of Earth (Wikipedia)

1a. Terraforming/seed world: Earth species brought onto another (usually empty) world, and let free to evolve naturally there.

Key works: Serina (Sheather, 2015)

1b. Posthuman evolution: future descendants of the human species, often involving artificial genetic manipulation.

Key works: Last and First Men (Olaf Stapledon, 1930), Man After Man (Dougal Dixon, 1990), All Tomorrows (C.M. Kosemen, 2006), Successors of Mankind (Pavel Volkov, 2018)

2. Alternative evolution: descendants of species from Earth's past, following a course of history alternative to our own.

Key Works: The Squamozoic (Darren Naish, 2013)

References: On sapient dinosaurs (multiple, since 1982)

2a. No-KT: the most popular type of alt-evo, assuming the survival of non-avian dinosaurs instead of their extinction at the end of the Cretaceous.

Key works: The New Dinosaurs (Dougal Dixon 1988), The Speculative Dinosaurs Project (multiple, 2001), Dinosauroids (Kosemen & Roy, 2008-19)

2b. Lost world: members of historically extinct or imaginary groups survive, and keep evolving, in isolated regions of Earth.

Key works: The Snouters (Gerolf Steiner, 1957), The World of Kong (Weta Workshop, 2005), Fragment (Warren Fahy, 2009), Diyu (Troll Man, 2014), R’lyeh (Troll Man, 2016)

2c. Spec paleontology: speculation about organisms that might have existed in Earth’s past (or hypothetical features of those that did).

Key works: All Yesterdays + All Your Yesterdays (Conway, Kosemen, Naish, 2012 and 2017)

References: The Silurian Hypothesis (Schmidt & Frank, 2018)

2d. Cryptid spec: giving a realistic and biologically plausible description of creatures from human myth, folklore, or fiction (Nessie, Bigfoot, and the like).

Key works: On the Track of Unknown Animals (Bernard Heuvelmans, 1955-95); Compendium of Dragonology (Dugald Steer, 2009), Cryptozoologicon (Conway, Kosemen, Naish, 2013)

3. Xenobiology: independent origin and evolution of life on worlds (planets, moons, &c) other than Earth.

Key works: Star Maker (Olaf Stapledon, 1937), Expedition (Wayne Barlowe, 1990; link in Russian) & Alien Planet (Discovery, 2005, TV), Epona (multiple, 1993), Natural History of an Alien (BBC, 1997, TV), Extraterrestrial part 1 & part 2 (National Geographic, 2005, TV), Sagan 4 (multiple, 2006), Snaiad (C. M. Kosemen, 2007), Furaha (Gert van Dijk, 2008, ongoing), Greenworld* (Dougal Dixon, 2010; only in Japanese!), Ilion (Emily Holland, 2012), The Museum of Alien Life (melodysheep, 2020)

References: Xenology (Robert Freitas, 1979), The Science of Aliens (Clifford Pickover, 1999), What Does a Martian Look Like? (Cohen & Stewart, 2002), Life in the Universe: Expectations and Constraints (Schulze-Makuch & Irwin, 2004), Plants under Alien Suns (Sol Company, 2007), Cosmic Biology (Schulze-Makuch & Irwin, 2010), Darwin’s Aliens (Levin & al, 2017), Superhabitable Worlds (multiple, 2020), The Biological Universe (Wallace Arthur, 2020), Habitats for Life in the Solar System (yours truly, 2020), The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy (Arik Kershenbaum, 2020), Alien Bodies (Winchell Chung, updated 2021)

3a. Alternative biochemistry (many refs in the previous point also address it)

References: Life Beyond Earth (Feinberg & Shapiro, 1980), Many Chemistries Could Be Used to Build Living Systems (W. Bains, 2004), The Limits of Organic Life in Planetary Systems (multiple, 2007), Alternative Biochemistries (thomastapir, 2009), Alternative Forms of Life (David Darling, 2016), Silicon as Building Block for Life (Petkowski &al 2020), Hypothetical Types of Biochemistry (Wikipedia)

3b. Spec planetology: focusing more on the planet itself (geology, geography, climate) than on the life that inhabits it.

Key works: Planetocopia (Chris Wayan, 2002)

References: Worldbuilder’s Cookbook (John McMullen, ca. 2005), Geoff’s Climate Cookbook (2006), Atmosphere and Climate of Terrestrial Exoplanets (Kaspi & Showman 2011), Worldbuilding (Winchell Cheung), Worldbuilding Pasta (2019, ongoing), Exocosm Exoplanetology (Abbydon, 2020, ongoing)

3c. Exotic xenobiology: organisms living on celestial bodies other than rocky planets or moons, often based on processes fundamentally different from Earth’s biochemistry.

Key works: Dragon’s Egg (Robert Forward, 1980)

References: Neutron Star Life (David Darling, 2016)

4. Alternate universes: development of life in worlds governed by different physical laws (e.g. fantasy settings).

References: Life in the Multiverse (Jenkins & Perez, 2010)

4a. Two-dimensional universes:

Key works: The Planiverse (A.K. Dewdney, 1984), Dichronauts (Greg Egan, 2017)

References: from above, Two Dimensional Science and Technology* (A.K. Dewdney, 1980), The Wonders of a Planiverse (Martin Gardner, 1980), Existence of Life in 2 + 1 Dimensions (J.H.C. Scargill, 2020)

4b. Sci-fantasy: evolution in worlds where a form of “magic” is present and detectable; often imagining species based on creatures from human myth or fiction.

4c. Portal universe: a self-contained world with its own physical laws colonized by organisms from our universe.

Key works: Sheatheria (Sheather, 2013)

5. Multiple types

Tangent Worlds (C.M. Kosemen, 2016)

Pavel Volkov’s general specbio link archive, Curious Archive

Astrovitae Magazine (since 2021)

A massive list of specbio projects online (by RustyyOnions)

Most of the unlinked books can be found either on LibGen. You can read in full the books in the Internet Archive by “borrowing” them from the virtual library if you register to the site (it’s free and you don’t need to provide anything but an email address; note that books can only be borrowed by one user at a time). The books marked with * are especially hard to find; please let me know if you find any copy.

... since we’re still here, I’ll take the chance to shill my DeviantArt gallery and my own projects: A Matter of Time (snapshots of future history, from the next decades to the end of the universe); Settlers from the Deep (Earth’s surface is sterilized by a solar flare and recolonized by aquatic and subterranean survivors); Tagra (a civilization of sapient dinosaurs inhabiting Antarctica just before it’s covered in ice); Gods of Salt (the “““real”““ history of human origins); Ea: Our Second Chance (life on an Earth-like planet colonized by ideologically fractious humans)

[errantsquam]

more oc refs.... bird reaper man (with MANY anatomy notes and, uh, speculative clothing?? IS THAT A THING)

bonus expressions under the cut