#dispersal of seeds and fruits

[jensownzoo]

Ah!

Apparently the transplanted volunteer passionflower vine has been blooming for the past few days and I missed it thanks to the excessive heat warning. Plus the fact that it's facing away from the house.

There are even two fruits setting on the spent blooms.

Plus there's this blossom that'll be open in the morning and several more buds formed (one shown here).

I've got a few more transplanted vines in a different area that aren't doing as well (the opossums keep trampling it) plus one of the vines in the original volunteer location regrew from a broken-off taproot that's doing great. So I have the potential for some staggered blooming too.

No idea if these are perennial here or if they just reseed themselves. The site where I think the volunteers came from had a lot fewer come up this year, but we had a weird weather year last year. So I guess we'll see.

[fanciedfacts]

Bats are not evil after all

We're wrong about bats🦇. They're not bloodthirsty monsters🧌 who won't convert you into vampires 🧛 They're productive for the ecosystem as power pollinators.

[cryptidcalling]

Watching a space exploration anime where the characters are stopping on unknown planets to forage, and I think knowing basic college-level ecology is making it less enjoyable to watch lol Like, watching these people hunt apex predators for food instead of collecting more fruits and vegetables and ignoring signs of obviously carnivorous plants is a little infuriating.

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Frogs eat insects, right? And sometimes other invertebrates, and maybe little vertebrates like tiny fish or tadpoles or smaller frogs. But this is one of those neat cases where you have a total departure from what's expected.

While Xenohyla truncata (aka "Izecksohn's Brazilian tree frog") does eat some invertebrate prey, it also deliberately seeks out fruit. Given that it lives high in the canopy of the rain forest amid bromeliads, it's not out of the realm of possibility that this started out as supplementing a normal frog diet with high-calorie fruit in tough times, and evolution favored those that were able to make better nutritional use of this opportunity.

It reminds me of the (mostly) vegetarian spider Bagheera kiplingi, and how primarily herbivorous ungulates like horses and deer will opportunistically eat baby birds or gnaw on carrion and bones. While we can make generalizations about the dietary habits of certain groups of animals, there are exceptions to every rule. And I personally find the existence of these unique outliers to be part of what makes the natural world so utterly fascinating--no matter how much we learn, there are always more surprises to discover.

[alithographica]

As promised, welcome to

Fun biology in TOTK’s designs

I'll keep this post updated as I go through the game. I'm going to skip the more general identifiable things like apples (they're based on apples!) because there are tons of more unusual species to talk about.

Overall, the really interesting thing I've noticed is that many of the more unique Earth-based lifeforms in TOTK are super ancient, like predating dinosaurs ancient, which is a really cool tie-in to the overall time-hopping plotline of TOTK. Specifically, they're found in the new areas (caves, depths) while the surface remains a bit more normal.

(There will be no plot spoilers in this post, and also I've barely gotten into the plot because I'm spending all my time wandering, so shhh no spoilers in the tags for like a month please.)

Most recent additions: More lilies, irises, wild ginger, spiny bones, pigeon extravaganza, plus added some more real photo comparisons to old stuff.

PLANTS

Bryophytes my beloved. Bryophytes are among the earliest land plants, waaaay predating flowers and even seeds. In our world, they’re small by necessity—they lack vascular systems to help move water around like other plants, so they have to stay small and moist (hence their frequency in caves in TOTK—though they do need some light in real life.)

In TOTK they’re quite large and I think that’s very sexy and art directors should give us big bryophytes more often

Anyway, there are three types of bryophytes: mosses, liverworts, and hornworts. First image pair is a moss, second is a liverwort. Those red-brown and palm-tree-like structures, respectively, are their reproductive structures.

Real liverwort photo © Graham Calow, NatureSpotUK

Not yet spotted: Hornworts! Did they forget the third bryophyte sister :(

I think these next guys are probably lycopods (specifically club moss, which is not a true bryophyte moss, thanks science.) Very old, but vascular, so they're a bit more evolutionarily recent than bryophytes.

Real photo © Gloria Hanley Schoenholtz, virginiawildflowers

All the enormous curly-topped trees in the depths: Ferns! They curl like that until they unfurl. Another very old plant, though younger than bryophytes and lycopods.

Real photo via The Cosmonaut, Wikipedia

Brightblooms and some of the other giant plants in the depths: Possibly based on a cycad? Again, a very ancient plant lineage. At this point, evolutionarily, they've developed seeds—that giant cone in the center is called a strobilus, and that's the seed structure.

These next few plants are angiosperms, meaning they produce flowers. Angiosperms are a more recent evolutionary lineage—still many millions of years old, but it took a while to develop flowers as a reproductive tactic.

Sundelions (left) are a fun recolor of a lily. There are also some scenery lilies (right) in various places—there are yellow ones that spring up when you turn on a lightroot (which gives them literal and thematic connection to the surface) and several other varieties, including tiger lilies, throughout Hyrule. Fun note, the sundelions appear to only have 5 stamen, while other lilies in the game (correctly) have 6. Seems to be an intentional decision to make it a more distinct fantasy species.

These next ones are Peruvian lilies/Alstroemeria, just used as a scenery plant but a very fun inclusion. Fun fact, not true lilies, so they're not deadly to cats like true lilies are.

Real photo © Dick Culbert, Wikipedia

Plum trees: These are also called out as plum trees in game! There's a journal in Kakariko that refers to the plum orchards.

Okay I'm a little proud of figuring this one out. Bomb flowers blend a few botanical references. Superficially, the fruit resembles a type of seed pod called a capsule—specifically it's very similar to a poppy capsule. The little red thing in the center is a nice addition to resemble both a flower stigma (reproductive part that leads to the ovary) and a bomb fuse. Now, poppy capsules disperse their seeds via wind, but there are other plants who do explode their seeds outwards as a dispersal tactic! This is called explosive dehiscence.

There is one tree in particular called the sandbox tree, AKA monkey-no-climb or dynamite tree (yes, really.) Their capsules look more like little pumpkins, but are known for violently exploding when ripe—they can launch seeds at 150 miles per hour (250 km/h) and spread them roughly 200 feet (60 m) away. The photo comparison is a poppy capsule but you should def go look up dynamite tree videos.

Real photo © PommeGrenade, pixabay

Fire fruits (and the other elemental fruits) grow on the same generic plant that looks kind of like it has grape leaves. Fire fruits resemble a specific botanical thing too though—the black netting is a papery calyx (part of the flower) seen in a nightshade genus, Physalis (golden berries, tomatillos, etc.)

Real photo © Helene Rogers, Alamy

I think this stuff is an Asarum, AKA wild ginger. I was actually puzzling over it until I walked past some today and went HEY

Not sure of the exact species but they're very green and heart-shaped and love being dense and low to the ground.

Real photo via David Stang, Wikipedia

Irises: Love irises, one of my favorite flowers and words, very happy to see them in game.

MISCELLANEA

Cup lichen! Lichen is not a plant, but a symbiotic structure of an algae + a fungi. Cup lichen is just a type of lichen formation that has a kind of vertical cup-like structure.

Real photo via Bernard Spragg

Geology crossover! Go look carefully at some of the whiter walls in the depths—they look like they have fossils of coral and other undersea hard-structured animals in them.

ANIMALS

Sticky lizards: Based on Diplocaulus, a very early (now extinct) amphibian! Their skulls are wacky. We're not sure whether the long sides stood out separately or were smoothly connected to the body by skin flaps, but the separate arrow-like shape is the most popular rendition.

Deep firefly: Might be a stretch because it could just be a multi-winged fantasy critter, but I think the "wings" and antennae are very reminiscent of Anomalocaris, an ancient aquatic arthropod.

Update: Other folks in the notes/tags have pointed out that they're probably based on a cryptid that's especially popular in Japan: skyfish AKA rods! They show up in photos and people think they're an alien lifeform. In reality, they're an optical blur created when a lower quality video captures intermittent flaps of an insect's wings, leaving sort of a many-winged smear in the photo. Thanks to all who left info!

Little frox: Another stretch because it totally could just be a Hinox-like frog, but every time I see the little ones I can't help but think of like...Ichthyostega, Mastodonsaurus, Eryops, and other early amphibians. They were pretty hefty—little frox size or bigger—and had with little waddling legs. This is less "I think it's definitely this" and more "it makes me happy when I picture frox as primitive amphibians."

I haven't detailed many of the scenery animals around Hyrule because most are identifiable with the camera function—it'll tell you that a certain animal is a heron or porgy, for example, and those groups are real, even though the exact species is made up. But I think the pigeons are fun because they're all crested pigeons. Pink-necked green pigeons may have also been the inspiration for the color palettes on the wood and rainbow pigeons.

Both pigeon photos via JJ Harrison, Wikipedia

Spiny bones: Not a specific critter, but those spiny bones that you can find lying around Eldin Canyon are vertebrae—possibly from the same thing that left those big rib cages around? The top spike is the spinous process where muscles attach, the littler spikes on the side are the transverse and articular processes. The dark O in the center is the spinal cord.

Also I made a friend who finally recognizes my purpose in Hyrule.

That's all I've got for now! Will add more as I keep playing.

[life-on-our-planet]

It's said to resemble a fox and a wolf, but in fact the maned wolf is the only species in the genus chrysocyon (meaning golden dog). It lives in grasslands and bushy areas of South America where it plays an important ecological role in the dispersal of fruit seeds. Animal Fact Files

[mindblowingscience]

Even bugs as small as woodlice can disperse seeds they eat, setting a new record for smallest animal recorded to do so. The Kobe University discovery underscores the crucial yet often overlooked role that small invertebrates play in ecosystems. Many plants offer fruit to animals so that they also eat the seeds and deposit them at a farther-off place after they have passed through the animal's digestive tract. For this to work smoothly, plant seeds need to be findable by and attractive to the potential disseminator, robust enough to not be damaged in the process, and small and smooth enough to actually pass through.

Continue Reading.

[tribbetherium]

Today as abundant and diverse as they were back on their home planet, the ants were among one of the most successful terrestrial invertebrates that had been introduced to HP-02017. Descended from a select few species, introduced as detritivores, pollinators and seed dispersers, these remarkable hymenopterans have since spread across the globe and occupied the niches similar to Earthly ants, such as seed-eaters, leaf-cutters, scavengers, predators, fungus farmers and even honeydew-ranchers: though the livestock of those ranchers are somewhat different, with the niches of sap-sucking true bugs instead filled by beetles and lepidopterans.

Some species, however, have begun taking on niches unlike any of their Terran forebearers. Raftants, aquatic species native to floodplains, developed specialized castes to act as oars and floaters to propel the colony along the surface. Perhaps stranger, at least for ants, are the lonestingers: ants that no longer live in colonies and have become solitary, with all individuals being winged and wasplike, no longer producing wingless sterile workers and taking on a niche akin to solitary wasps and bees.

One of the most unusual species in the Middle Temperocene, however, are the lime ants (Citromyrmex polyregina), an abundant and widespread species found all across South Ecatoria and the neighboring islands. Easily recognizable by their distinct yellow and black coloring, these ants are generalist omnivores diet-wise: consuming both plant and animal matter, though prioritizing carbohydrate-rich sugary food like fruit, sap and nectar for the active adults, while saving protein-rich seeds, bugs and meat to the larvae to encourage their growth. Like most ants, they communicate by pheromones, travelling across the forest floor in single file to scout out food sources they can carry back to the colony. They, too, have specialized castes for their vital activities, such as small minor workers that participate in foraging and nest cleanup, major workers that act as heavy lifters and back-up defense, and soldiers, armed with large heads and powerful mandibles who defend the nest, cut up large pieces of food, and even ferry around the smallest workers hitchhiking on their bodies.

But one truly remarkable characteristic of the lime ant is its behavioral flexibility, thanks to an unusual recessive gene, the Q gene, that causes the species to produce three separate types of queens, depending on which alleles they acquire. Each one lives a completely different lifestyle: one that affects the behavior of their corresponding colonies as well. These genes mix together during nuptial flights, where alates from different colonies pair together queens and drones that in turn, produce offspring that are homozygous QQ, heterozygous Qq, or homozygous qq. This is further complicated by male ants being haploid, and thus males are always only Q or q.

Homozygous QQ queens develop into what is known as the despot morph: a sedentary, highly-aggressive queen with a bulky body and large mandibles. Her colony dwells in a fixed, permanent nest that occupies the same space for as long as she lives, which can be as long as fifteen years. During which time, their nests can grow into immense proportions, spanning tunnels and chambers many meters across and inhabiting up to 100,000 inhabitants. Despot morph queens tolerate no other reproducing female in the colony, and a single despot morph queen rules supreme: aggressively killing any other breeding female in her nest, be they rival invaders, her own alate daughters, or a worker that starts laying unfertilized eggs. All of her genetically fatherless drone offspring will be Q drones. If she mates with a Q drone, all her female offspring will be despot morphs as well, and if she mates with a q drone, half her offspring will be despot morphs, and half her offspring will be Qq heterozygous: the communal morphs.

Communal morphs, the second kind, are long-bodied and capable of traveling long distances on foot, unlike the sedentary despot morph. These queens, the most common kind, are different from despot morphs in another way: they tolerate the presence of other communal morph queens, thus producing a polygyne colony that is much larger than those of despot morphs, with as many as nine or ten queens and colonies growing to up to a million or more. Their large colony size instead favors them to constantly be on the move, foraging for food in an area and building smaller temporary nests and moving on once food becomes depleted in migrations every few months, with the queens marching along in the swarms and the brood carried by the workers as they go. With multiple queens that can be regularly replaced as they die, the colony as a whole can survive significantly longer than those of a despot morph, which is important as their nomadic lifestyle also leaves them with a higher mortality rate due to exposure to environmental factors and predators. Being heterozygous Qq, they can produce either Q drones or q drones, and a communal morph queen that mates with a Q drone will produce half despot morph offspring and half communal morph offspring, and a communal morph queen that mates with a q drone will produce half communal morph offspring and half qq homozygous offspring: the usurper morph.

Usurper morphs are unusual as they do not build colonies at all: they never shed their wings and remain solitary, similar to the lonestingers. As they disperse from their parent colony during the nuptial flight, they mate once with a drone and store his sperm, but do not start laying eggs right away. Instead, over the course of their long lifespan which may last many years (but rarely as long as the despot and communal morphs), the usurper queen instead infiltrates the nests of the other two kinds shortly before the nuptial flights begin, lays her eggs inside, and leaves all the effort of childcare to the workers of the colonies. Covering the eggs with pheromones to trick the colony into accepting them, she functions in essence as a solitary brood parasite whose progeny are raised by others. As she does not form a colony: none of her offspring become workers and soldiers, and instead always hatch into queens or drones: drone offspring are always q as they are born from unfertilized eggs. If she mates with a Q drone, half of her daughters will be communal morphs and half will be usurpers, and if she mates with a q drone, all her daughters will be usurper morphs.

This unusual arrangement likely evolved as an advantageous trait due to fickle, changing seasons and environments, allowing the species as a whole to persist. When food is plenty despot morphs become more common, able to defend a productive patch of land. When food is scarcer, communal morphs dominate, able to travel long distances to scout out new foraging grounds. And when times are the toughest, the most common morph becomes usurpers: being solitary, they need less food than a whole colony and can depend on the few hardy colonies to rear their young. Through a complex set of environmental dynamics, genetic inheritance, and competition between the queen types, the lime ant proves itself an adaptable and tenacious species that finds great success in the forest floor ecosystems of South Ecatoria.

Despite its complicated and bizarre life history, however, the local northhounds that occupy its range, in particular the vulpins, have found a rather mundane use for this abundant species. When threatened, major workers spray formic acid from specialized nozzles in their abdomens as a ranged mechanism. This, however, has been exploited by the vulpins who intentionally provoke the ants to get them to spray their acid onto food items: in effect acting as both a preservative to ward off fungal and bacterial growth on food, and as well as a seasoning that imparts a sour, citrus-like flavor onto said food. While toxic in large quantitities, the ants' formic acid is harmless in small amounts to larger creatures like the northhounds: making for a surprisingly ideal additive in the vulpins' cultural fondness of imparting different tastes in their primitive form of 'cuisine'.

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[tinylongwing]

Quick little fanihi sketch, just because they're too dang cute. We see lots of these around Rota where they're thankfully still fairly abundant and serve well in their fruit-eating, seed-dispersing role on the island.

(Mariana Fruit Bat, Pteropus marianus)

[artechoceneexplorer]

Herbs and Spices of Teyvat: Liyue

Liyue is a region characteristic by its impressive geography, mainly its towering mountains and canyons that carve the land of Geo. This, apart from incredible landscapes, it creates a multitude of microclimates, in which an incredible diversity of flora can grow. And some of these, the people of Liyue have made use of them for their cooking.

Some of the more known ones are the Jueyun Chili, the Violetgrass, and the Qingxin.

The Jueyun Chili, obtained from the Jueyun Chili Plant (Capsicopunica graveolens) is a punicoid bush found wild in the northern lowlands of Liyue, but is cultivated elsewhere. Their fruits, especially their seeds and the oils the fruit secretes, have an extremely spicy, almost burning hot smell, due to high concentrations of capsaicin, and the reason why it is used in a lot of dishes in the local cuisine. This compound is however clearly meant to dissuade mammals like humans from eating it, as its dispersers are pigeons, immune to capsaicin.

The Violetgrass (Campanulocatena scandens) is a lithophytic labiate plant that can be found all across Liyue. Despite this distribution, and its very pleasant fragrance, it is not very commonly used. This is because obtaining it is not an easy task. As a lithophyte, it grows exclusively on rock crevices in walls, cliffs and other of the most inaccessible places of this very mountainous region. However, whoever manages to get a hand on some of these hard to acquire flowers, will be paid a good price for their effort.

The Qingxin (Qingxinia aspilus) is a rare, highly sought after plant in the region. This ground creeping berberid has very specific growth condition requirements, and thus can only be found at the highest peaks, where its underground rhizome helps the plant survive the intense cold. The part of the plant that is used are its sweet, almost translucent flowers, as the rest of the plant is bitter.

[mutant-distraction]

Maned wolves are fascinating creatures native to central and eastern South America, particularly found in countries like Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Peru. As the largest canid in South America, they are known for their distinctive long legs and large ears, adaptations that help them thrive in grasslands and scrub forests.

These wolves primarily feed on small mammals, such as wild guinea pigs and rabbits, but they also enjoy fruits, which makes them unique among canids. Their tall, slender build allows them to navigate tall grasses easily, and they are often solitary animals, known for their unique vocalizations that resemble a mix of a bark and a howl.

Maned wolves play a crucial role in their ecosystem by helping to control small mammal populations and dispersing seeds through their fruit consumption.

source: The Fabulous Weird Trotters

[alphynix]

Spectember/Spectober 2023 #09: Things With Wings

(Apologies for the abrupt absence – I'm okay, just having everything break down at once. This is fine.)

So— back to the speculative evolution request list!

@thebigdeepcheatsy requested a "cactus-dwelling/germinating evolution of introduced rosy-faced lovebirds":

While Agapornis cheatsyi is still quite physically similar to its introduced ancestors, this lovebird has developed a close symbiotic relationship with the cactus Carnegiea ornipolis, a descendant of the modern saguaro.

Naturally fasciated, this cactus grows a splaying fan-like crown which the lovebirds excavate their shallow nest burrows into. Feeding on the cactus' fruit in early summer, the lovebirds then disperse the seeds via their droppings – a process that significantly improves propagation chances, both due to the birds commonly foraging and defecating around suitable nurse plants and the passage through their gut speeding up germination.

———

Someone calling themself "LB" asked for some "flying afrotherians":

Elbeitandraka venenifer is a descendant of tree-climbing Malagasy tenrecs that developed gliding membranes – and its lineage is now just about achieving true powered flight.

About 25cm long (~10"), its proportionally short broad wings require it to fly very fast to generate enough lift for its weight. It mostly only actively flies when traveling between roosts and feeding sites (or when escaping from threats), alternating between gliding to save energy and flapping to recover altitude.

It's an opportunistic omnivore, crawling around in the tree canopy foraging for vegetation, fruits, fungi, invertebrates, and the occasional smaller vertebrate, using its flexible sengi-like nose to probe around in crevices.

Much like modern common tenrecs it's capable of hibernating for months at a time through periods of scarce food availability. It also accumulates alkaloid toxins in its body from its arthropod prey, advertising its unpalatability to predators with bold contrasting warning coloration on its wing membranes.

———

And here's a combination of a couple of anonymous requests for both "flying heterodontosaurs" and "dragons with hind leg wings, a la sharovipteryx":

Inversodraco rapax is a highly specialized Jurassic descendant of heterodontosaurids that took to climbing and gliding, developing delta-wing-like membranes on their hindlimbs convergently similar to those of the earlier sharovipterygids.

Around 75cm long (~2'6"), it has unusually flexible hip joints for a dinosaur, able to splay its legs out to the sides to deploy wings supported by an elongated outer toe on each foot. Its arms form small forewings for stability, and its long tail ends in a vane of stiffened feathers that aid in steering.

Unlike its herbivorous-to-omnivorous ancestors it's primarily a carnivore, swooping down onto small prey and grabbing it with its talon-like forelimbs.

[headspace-hotel]

From the Wikipedia page on Pawpaw (Asimina triloba):

The megafaunal dispersal syndrome is a common feature of some plants native to the Western Hemisphere, where a large proportion of megafaunawent extinct near the end of the glacial episodes. Such fruits are now regarded as evolutionary anachronisms.[27] Their anatomical features, such as seeds too big for today's fruit eaters to swallow and then defecate, means they are no longer well adapted for current ecological conditions.[50] Another indicator of dispersal adaptation for megafauna is that pawpaw fruit (wild types and most cultivars) tend to remain green or become blotched with brown when at peak ripeness. Mammals (other than primates) rely on olfactory rather than visual clues for discerning ripe fruit, so fruit color is no signal of ripeness for large mammals.

When I was out in the woods last fall and happened upon a pawpaw grove, I can testify, giving you my word as a primate, that the smell stopped me in my tracks. A grove full of ripe pawpaws is unbelievably, intoxicatingly fragrant.

Not a single pawpaw tree could be seen from the trail, but the scent was strong and enticing. I literally sniffed my way towards it. It was that way that I spotted the pawpaw grove, and derailed my plans for the entire morning climbing 50 feet down a steep hillside to reach the pawpaws in the holler below me.

"Evolutionary anachronisms?" Spoken like someone who has never taken orders from a plant! Asimina triloba has intimate knowledge of a primal part of my psyche and appetites that no other organism does. The other day I was on iNaturalist scrolling old photos and I saw a box of pawpaw fruits and immediately started salivating.

And soon, I'm taking my pawpaw saplings out to plant them next to a creek in town! I fell for it! Mutualism- the oldest trick in the book!

[typhlonectes]

The Ringtail (Bassariscus astutus)

AKA “Ringtail Cat”

If there’s one thing you should know about the Ringtail cat, it’s that they are not a cat! In fact, they are a member of the raccoon family. 

Their similar features to a feline earn them a few other names including miner’s cat and civet cat. Despite these misconceptions, the Ringtail is named for its tail, which is long, ringed and bushy.

Native to the southwest US and Mexico, these mysterious mammals are nocturnal and have many adaptations to help them survive at night. Their large, round eyes help them see in complete darkness and their big ears allow them to hear the slightest sounds. They can also maneuver along cliffs and between small openings and cracks, while descending headfirst by rotating their hind feet 180 degrees. With the help of their tail, they’re able to balance and climb.

When they’re not active and out hunting, they are most likely sleeping in their den which can include hollow trees, rock crevices and abandoned burrows from other animals. 

They may also be hiding from predators like coyotes, bobcats, and great horned owls.  As an omnivore, they eat a variety of foods, though they tend to prefer meat.  Insects, mice, lizards, snakes, scorpions, fruit and plants make up a typical diet.  As a result, they play an important role in the ecosystem by maintaining balance in these prey populations and aiding in seed dispersal.

via: Zion National Park - Utah, USA

[papayajuan2019]

the dispersion of seeds for fruit must feel good as hell

[chilirasbora]

Egyptian fruit bat | Rousettus aegyptiacus

Also known as the Egyptian rousette, this bat primarily resides in Africa, though can be found in some surrounding countries. They eat a selection of fruits and are quite important for both seed dispersal and pollination!

Have you ever heard of the phrase "blind as a bat"? The truth is, a lot of bats are just about as blind as we humans are. Fruit bats tend to see in the dark better than their insectivorous relatives, which is helpful to identify which fruits are good to eat and which aren't! Sense of smell takes a big role in this as well.

🦇