Round 2 (Part 1)
I don’t have time to finish the entire round at once, so I’ll show you guys the results for now, and later I’ll post the detailed graphs and charts of how every species performed.
With Thrivium Convertium and Locevin diverging as the two descendant lineages of Primum Thrivium, it appeared that there was going to be a flourish of new multicellular organisms in the tidepool.
But fate proved otherwise! The new branch of Thrivium Convertium diverged into two more new species still, the Crestinium species and Zenius Zoneios. Alas, it appears that a mutation in this clade of organisms caused all three species to now seek half of their energy from glucose clouds, and half of their energy from hunting Locevin organisms. But these primitive species lacked the effectiveness of proper predators. Because these three species only had extremely close range tactile senses to find their prey, it would take them years to detect any Locevin organisms. Even when they would detect them, they would only actually notice them and start chasing them 50% of the time, because of some tactile camouflage that Locevin had evolved. As a result, since each of these three species had so few members anyways (each starting the round with only 55) most of their members died from starvation, and all three went EXTINCT!
Locevin
Status: 97 members (-1 from last round)
Locevin evolved lighter muscle and connective tissues in its body, but since it was so small to begin with this only reduced its body mass from 4.3 to 4.2 grams. This made an insignificant difference in its acceleration when swimming.
Locevin also evolved a series of elastic fibers in its skin, making its exterior a lot softer to touch and thus harder to actually detect through tactile perception. This helped reduce its detection by predators (although the predators were pretty poorly optimized to begin with and likely would’ve gone extinct anyways).
Finally, Locevin’s lack of adaptations to increase its competitiveness in hunting glucose clouds made it originally very poorly adapted to grazing the clouds of sugar. It began the 100,000 years only winning 6% of hunts for glucose against the other species. However, as the other species died of starvation from not being able to detect Locevin, Locevin’s competitiveness for glucose hunting increased until it is now the sole remaining species in the tidepool and uncontested in hunting the glucose.
Thrivium Convertium
Status: Extinct
Thrivium Convertium, the close cousin of Locevin and one of the two direct descendant species of Primum Thrivium, has gone extinct! Over the millenia, it evolved an instinct to spend half of its time hunting seeking Locevin organisms over glucose clouds. However, while there are currently millions of glucose clouds in the tidepool, there are only 98 Locevin organisms (which are also much smaller than the glucose clouds). Even though Thrivium Convertium evolved increased strength and endurance in its muscles, as well as making its own muscles less energy yielding to other predators, these traits were not enough to overcome its inability to detect Locevin and lose members to starvation.
Crestinium
Status: Extinct
Crestinium was one of the two new species that branched off of Thrivium Convertium. While Convertium evolved more efficient muscles, Crestinium evolved a change to its body shape (and also slightly improved its muscles). Instead of a sphere, members of the Crestinium species gradually evolved into a hydrodynamically designed tear-drop shape. This greatly increased their speed from 14.5 cm/s to 25.1 cm/s. This made the species great at hunting glucose, but alas since it was so limited in its ability in detecting Locevin this hardly helped in that respect, and the species’ inability to find its prey ultimately led to it going extinct from starvation.
Zenius Zoneios
Status: Extinct
Zenius Zoneios was the other new species to diverge from Thrivium Convertium. However, while Convertium evolved more efficient muscles, Zoneios evolved an increased lifespan. Members of Zoneious gradually evolved their DNA molecules to not decay as much every time their cells would reproduce, meaning that the cells of their body would be able to reproduce for longer before reaching the natural old age death of the organism. This increase Zoneios’ lifespan from 1 to 2 months. Zoneios also evolved more efficient muscles that were able to contract and relax more often before tiring. However, these two adaptations were not enough to overcome the fact that Zoneios was painfully unadapted for detecting its prey, Locevin, thus leading to very low success rates in hunting. Eventually, starvation led to the extinction of this species.
Species History of the Planet
Current Player Scores
TeaKing: 195
Blackjacksike: 55
Evolution4weak: 0
ZenZoneGaming: 0
In the next post I’ll post the performance stats so you can see how each species did! Also, @Deathpacitoast and @Brother_Roga you can now join the game. Your only option is to branch off of Locevin. Choose what to name your species and how to spend your mutation points (MP). Also, feel free to wait until after I post the performance stats before choosing how to spend your MP.
To everyone who went extinct, you can rejoin the waitlist if you wish!