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Forums → The Tavern → Create-an-ecosystem club
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Hello there! One of my favorite hobbies after studying some biology and paleontology I always liked doing the same thing:
Creating a fictional (yet as realistic as it can) ecosystem and evolution.
I am not the best at it, as scientists say "there is always more research to be done about life", I (in the last few years) have (in a way) created three eco systems....
In this club (if you decide to join) you will create a fictional, yet realistic eco system and environment... you can either choose something like determining only some organisms on one sort of land (for example creating a desert and inventing the multiple species in it)
Want to join? Just say so... here is (as I like to do it) how you start:
(note that you can just post your idea for environment and do the rest later)
1. First you need to determine the environment, you can go from normal earthly environments (like sea, desert, jungle, alpine, plain, etc...) to thinking harder about what would happen to life in extreme temperature or creating your own environment. (Note: you can also create more than one if you want and they should change as time and evolution take place) also in this part you SHOULD try to start thinking about your kingdom plantae
2a. Determine the equality of your eco system, how many carnivores? How many herbivores? How many omnivores?
2b. Start thinking about animals, how do they look? How do they react with other animals? Start modeling your species... if you want you can try to draw it...
2c. I never REALLY bother to do much about bacteria, viruses and fungi, if you feel like researching those and creating some for your eco system feel free to do so...
3. start determining how evolution goes, this is (to my opinion) the funnest part, you start thinking, how do the enviorment change affect my eco system? Are there mass extinctions? Biological rivalry? Maybe a species grows sentient, what happens then?
there is a lot more stuff to do, though I will let you decide about it on your own... this project is good for both fun and educational purposes, also I want to see what are other people's ideas....
Have fun, if you have any questions just ask me!
~DV~
- 54 Replies
I haven't even finished the ecosystem, need to ruminate about how my beasties will look like. I'll tell you when I'm finished and ready for evolution
HahiHa you are faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar from evolution... Those were for Jdogg, not you...
Yeah we have. And dealdy V doesn't even realize when I'm replying to his comment three posts above, not the one addressed at you. Should use quotes next time. But who cares..
Anyway, before adding new life I must fix some other things..
Diurnal rhythm: Days are rather long there, as are nights. It is approximately a one week cycle, one week day, one week night. This should have interesting effects..
Wheather: Most of the time there is a faint wind blowing through the plains, the sky is always clear and the wheather good. Except that it snows each month, during the first night (all 168 hour night long). That has to do with the currents in the sea far to the south. And each year there is a strong tempest with orcan-like winds and heavy snowfall.
Geology: from time to time, due to the volcanic activity, there are small earthquakes, leading to crevices across the land, covered by snow.
To add some plants: black skeletal bushes are growing in the plain; they don't have leaves, but very flat twigs. They are black because next to photosynthesis, they also developed a way to produce energy with heat gradients they have in special cells, who are activated at sunrise and produce lots of energy as long as temperatures rise a bit; to gain as much heat from the sun as possible, they put melanin in these gradient cells. Accumulating a lot of ressources during day, they stock some for the night period in their roots.
There are also lots of different varients of fungus growing on the walls and at the bottom of all the crevices.
I will have three herbivores, two specialists and one generalist; five different sorts of carnivores, and two omnivores. Then a lot of smaller creatures feeding on the fungus, with a lot of smaller creatures feeding on the fungivores; I'll come back to the crevice ecosystem though.
Most unicellulars are either at the lava pools, or in the crevices.
end of part 2 of my developer's diary.
Sorry for the double post, I should write this down before I forget it..
Food chains: One of the herbivore specialist is specialized on Volcanic Lichen, the other one on Burned Bushes. The generalist has no chance against each specialist in normal conditions; however it developed defense against the carnivores, allowing it to eat plants in their territories where the specialists can't go. Three of the carnivores eat herbivores, the other two of them are second grade carnivores, feeding on carnivores. No evolution up to now, no revelation about past developments either.
I really don't want this to die...
The planet of my ecosystem is a triangular prism. The gravity shifts very suddenly on the edges of the planet. Many times animals fall out of the sky when they cross over the edge, and the land creatures use this to their advantage. The air is very very moist in the planet, and the animals do not drink much water because they get it from the air. Most animals have gill like things that absorb the water from the air. Not the flying animals though, just the land animals. The average temperature is 50 degrees Fahrenheit. This is also about as hot as it ever gets. There are 2 seasons. One season has random weather, that is generally from 0-50 degrees Fahrenheit. In the other season the temperature drops a ton, to about -100 degrees Fahrenheit. All the animals have adapted to this extreme weather, and almost all the land animals live underground in the second season.
@ HaiHa, that is very good, you should start thinking about what kind of life will be appropriate to live in that kind of planet, temperature, environment and everything...
Keep on going...
@ Jdogg, sorry, I myself saw it was getting buried so I didn't bother to bump it and never saw HaiHa and you posting...
Sorry about that...
Anyway a triangular prism planet is a bit weird, also kind of impossible physically, I would suggest thinking about evolving your organisms instead of giving your planet a wacky shape...
That said, of course, if you can't actually show me a way this works physically... You can try proving either that it works physically or that this particular eco-system could not survive without the wacky physics... Both might work...
NOTE TO EVERYONE:
I am not the smartest dude in the world, I have a very limited knowledge of physics and I am still advancing my horizons in biology (Already have enough knowledge of Paleontology though :P)
If you think you can do better, have better speculations, you think you can prove to me you know more of the subject and can advance good enough without my advice, please do... I am hoping both my knowledge and ideas of biology as yours will expand while you are doing these projects...
have fun
~DV~
Lol, sometimes I was just way to lazy to post here. And I only thought up the weird planet because I needed to bump the thread.
Thats really a wonderful Idea as we should be aware of our environment and ecosystem and their related issues.
Free database of eco friendly companies.
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