Inter-relationships: A brief introduction (:

With the details of my organism finally completed, here is a brief introduction of the inter-relationships in Planet Zork:

The food web is as such:


According to the food web, I also thought of the interrelationships between the organisms and some key points:
- The Sun is the main source of energy
- The predation of each organism helps to keep the population of the organism in check, as if there are less primary consumers, there will be more producers, which will lead to overcrowding.
- The energy received at each trophic level is different, as the secondary consumer will receive a lesser percentage of energy from the producer as compared to the percentage received by the primary consumer from the producer. This is because the some of the energy is also used for life processes.

How to build a Lumbripus Placus

I finished the model over the weekends, and based on what I did, I wrote a set of instructions to create it! (:

Materials: (materials can be substituted with other appropriate ones)
- 1kg paper clay
- Beige paint
- Green paint
- Brown paint
- Yakult straw
- 6 pencil caps
- A floor-ball (can be an old, broken one, as long as it still has its shape)
- Newspaper
- Small container of water
- Clear nail polish

Steps to make it:
1. Roll some newspaper over the floor ball to increase the diameter of the sphere. Add enough layers of newspapers until the entire sphere is around 8cm in diameter.
2. Flatten the clay to around 2cm in thickness. Then, tear out parts of the clay and paste them onto the sphere.
3. Make sure there are no gaps in clay, ie, the clay covers every part of the sphere. Also, smooth the clay to ensure that there are no cracks. Add some (around 2 drops) of water when the clay is too dry to help smooth it.
4. Using the remaining clay, create 2 cylinder models for the legs. Then, attach the legs any part of the sphere you deem fit. To attach the legs, scratch a few cross on the part of the sphere and the surface of the leg you want to attach together. Use some water and press the leg against the sphere. Using some clay, form a thin rope to tie around the leg. Then press this rope down, attaching the leg to the sphere, or the body.
5. Begin on the hands. Make paw-like shapes with 3 fingers in each paw, then stick in the pencil caps to each finger. Ensure that the pencil caps are firmly in place. Use some clay to make the tips of the nail more pointy. Then, using similar steps to attach the legs, attach the paws.
6. Poke the Yakult straw into the body, removing it after it creates a hole. Squirt some superglue into the hole and hold it in place.
7. Ensure that the whole model does not have cracks, and that the body parts are firmly in place.
8. Leave the clay to dry. The clay takes around 3h to dry.
9. Start painting the model. The whole of the model should be beige, except for the proboscis which is white and the nails, which are brown.
10. After paint has dried, cover the model in clear nail polish to give it the "moist" effect. A more effective way of doing this is pouring a suitable amount of nail polish onto the palette and using a medium-sized paintbrush to spread it. The layer of nail polish need not be thick.
11. Allow the nail polish to dry. Finally, spread a thick layer of green paint on the bottom of the feet to create the slime.

With that, it is done! :D

However, some difficulties faced:
- The clay at the tip of the nails chipped off easily
- The "slime" effect was hard to recreate
- When I left the clay to dry, the back of the clay was slightly flattened. Luckily this did not affect the overall spherical shape of the model :D

Drawing of the Lumbripus Placus~

This is a biological drawing of the Lumbripus Placus. Some parts of the picture were photoshopped due to problems caused by poor scanning. Click on the image to see it larger (:

Other organisms! :D

During our group discussion on Tuesday, we also gave each other a brief idea of our organisms and made sure that a logical food web could be established between our organisms. These are the other organisms that will be living in the same habitat as my producer.

Primary consumer
Name: Stabilocius needlei
Body length: 40cm
Adaptations:

Structural:
- It has extremely short and light body and very long legs.

- It has needle-like tips on its legs to pierce through the producer.

- It has wings to fly right above producer than land, piercing it through.

Behavioral:
- It lays approx 50 eggs which are covered with a substance that is bad-tasting to discourage predators from eating it.

- It able to camouflage and change colours according to its surrounding colour

- It sweats a lot through pores on the skin to lose heat in the hot rainforest

- It grows a hook when producer is killed to retrieve the producer from underground

Secondary consumer:
Name: Snaky Sucker
Nutrition: Carnivorous- feeds on spikilocious
Average life span: 7 years (3 years to mature)
Average length: 10m
Average breadth: 10cm
Average circumference: 40cm
Method of reproduction: The Snaky sucker lays eggs but does not take care of young. It reproduces at an average of twice in a lifetime, laying 5 eggs each time. The eggs are parasitic eggs.
Adaptations:
1. Its skin has the ability to absorb water and nutrients and is able to filter the water to make sure it does not absorb toxic waste. The skin is green with brown patches to camouflage when slithering through the huge diversity of undergrowth on the topsoil. The skin is also able to prevent water loss, which helps it to keep cool in high temperatures and prevent dehydration.
2. It has a streamlined body shape and smooth skin to slither quickly, overcoming dense undergrowth and extensively weathered soil.
3. The Snaky Sucker has sharp teeth which produces digestive juices to tear apart prey easily and digest the prey before swallowing. It also has a poison sting that protrudes out of mouth and secretes poison when pierced into body of prey. This sting is able to stretch out to 10m.
4. Finally, the Snaky Sucker has very good eyesight. It is able to spot movement of its prey from 10m away.



Detritivore:
Name: Pauropodius pincus
Appearance: 11cm long (body 7cm, pincers 4cm), 2cm wide, 0.5cm deep
Life span: 3 weeks
Reproduction: The Pauropodius pincus lays around 400eggs.
Adaptations:
The Pauropodius pincus has sharp pincers to further break down large decaying mass into smaller chunks for feeding and eyes which are adapted to see in low light/no light. The body of the Pauropodius pincus is brownish black, small, flat and has segments. It also has a hard exoskeleton. It has small and numerous legs with hair to enable movement. The hairs on its legs help the sense its environment. The Pauropodius pincus also lays many eggs to deal with its high death rate.

Characteristics of organism (II)

My group met up on Tuesday for discussion :D After discussing, I decided to make some changes and also add in some adaptations to my organism.

Summary of the changes and additions made:
Additions:
- The size of Lumbripus Placus was decided. It is an average of 10cm in diameter. The maximum length it can reach is 15cm, and the minimum length is around 8cm.
- The color of the Lumbripus Placus is beige, and is identical to an earthworm's skin.
- The common name of the Lumbripus Placus is "Kyu", which is Japanese for the word "ball".
- The Lumbripus Placus is also naturally born without eyes.
- The purpose of having nutrients is to support itself during high rainfall periods as there may not be enough heat during those periods.
- The Lumbripus Placus has brown nails due to its eating iron oxide,
- Finally, the Lumbripus Placus is has the very sensitive to sound and use sound to judge movements. This works the same way as a bat.
Changes:
- Instead of 30 buds during the reproduction, there will be 100 buds. Also, the organism will not die after reproduction. Therefore, the lifespan is around 24 weeks (6 months). The life cycle is the same however, the young stage lasts around 2 weeks and the adult stages lasts around 22 weeks.

Characteristics of organism (I)

I reviewed the previous posts and finally decided what the characteristics of my organism is like. The following is a brief idea it. This organism will then be edited and refined again.

Name of organism: Lumbripus placus

Characteristics:
The Lumbripus placus is a ball shaped organism with a pair of feet and a pair of paws which have claws to help it dig in the soil and hide from predators. The skin, an insulator of heat, is able to retain a great amount of heat and make food for itself with this heat energy, which is abundant in its habitat. The Lumbripus Placus is also able to gain nutrients, for example iron oxide, through a a partially-permeable proboscis.

The Lumbripus placus reproduces through budding. The young buds firstly grow out as a part of the parent. It slowly develops a proboscis (this takes around 1 day) and sucks nutrients from the parent using that tube. Over a period of 5 days, the young will develop other body parts. There will be around 30 of such buds on a single parent. During this time, due to the fast absorption of nutrients by the young, the Lumbripus placus adult will be greatly weakened soon after the young break off from the parent, the parent will die.

The outer-covering of the Lumbripus placus is bare skin. The skin is moist throughout its body and slimy only at its feet, due to secretion of a slime that is caused by its eating iron oxide for nutrients. The slime will be able to allow sand to be stuck on the feet of the organism, creating enough friction for the Lumbripus placus to be able to move quickly through the slippery conditions in its habitat.

Other characteristics

So far, I have only focused on the specific adaptations of my organism to the environment. Therefore, I brainstormed on other characteristics of my organisms, with reference to the relevant abiotic factors.

- What is the producer's method of reproduction?
Relevant factors: High rainfall (result in floods), extensive weathering of soil (These factors cause eggs/seeds to be easily washed away)
There are many methods to solve this problem, for example, allow the seeds to be able to germinate in water (like aquatic plants), but the solution that I would like to implement is that the seeds go through budding. That is, the seeds grow out of the parent. The young buds firstly grow out as a part of the parent. It slowly develops sucking tubes (this takes around 1 day) and sucks nutrients from the parent using that tube. Over a period of 5 days, the young will develop other body parts. There will be around 30 of such buds on a single parent. During this time, due to the fast absorption of nutrients by the young, the Lumbripus Placus adult will be greatly weakened soon after the young break off from the parent, the parent will die.

- How many stages are there in its life cycle, and what is the average span of each stage?
Based on the method of reproduction as stated above, the life cycle of my organism is as such:

Therefore, its average lifespan is about 1 month.

- What is my organism's outer covering?
Relevant factors: High humidity (will not allow quick evaporation of water), high temperature (not too thick, e.g. no thick fur), high rainfall (the outer covering, at least on the legs, must be rough to create enough friction)

After considering these factors and the many different types of outer covering (for example, skin, fur, feathers, etc.) I decided to go with my initial idea of the organism having the skin like earthworms (refer to the post "Habitat conditions and possible adaptations"). The skin of my organism at its feet is moist and slimy, due to secretion of a slime that is caused by its eating iron oxide for nutrients. The slime will be able to allow sand to be stuck on the feet of the organism.

The skin is also a poor conductor of heat, as it retains heat energy for my organism to make food.

It could also be ball-shaped to prevent water from collecting, so as to reduce possibilty of fungi growing.

Habitat conditions and possible adaptations (II)

I wanted to know if aluminium and iron oxide could be nutrients for my producer, as such I went to research on them. Here's is what I found about their effects on plants (the Earth producer).

Aluminium
Aluminium is primary among the factors that reduce plant growth on acid soils. Although it is generally harmless to plant growth in pH-neutral soils, the concentration in acid soils of toxic Al3+ cations increases and disturbs root growth and function.
Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium#Effect_on_plants

Iron Oxide (rust)
Green plants apply iron for energy transformation processes. Plants that are applied as animal feed may contain up to 1000 ppm of iron, but this amount is much lower in plants applied for human consumption. Generally plants contain between 20 and 300 ppm iron (dry mass), but lichens may consist up to 5.5% of iron. When soils contain little iron, or little water soluble iron, plants may experience growth problems.
Taken from: http://www.lenntech.com/periodic/water/iron/iron-and-water.htm

If so, Aluminium will not be good choice for nutrients and rather, should be avoided. Iron oxide, however, would be a good source of nutrition for my organism.

Habitat conditions and possible adaptations

(Click to see a larger image)

This is my first draft of a mindmap showing relations between the conditions of the habitat and how it might affect the creature. I identified problems and suggested some adaptions, therefore with reference to the adaptations, I thought of Earth organisms and researched on them. The organisms are:
- A mole
This is a random organism I used to force-fit. The a good adaptation of the mole I would like to force fit into my organism is that it has claws to borrow through the soil. This is may be a good way for my creature to escape its predator as it can dig underneath the soil to hide.

- A venus flytrap
The characteristic of the venus flytrap that I want to force fit is that it is able to take in other nutrients by eating insects.

- An earthworm
The characteristics of the earthworm I would like to have in my organism is its ability to get water from moisture in the air. Another possible characteristic I would consider force-fitting into my organism is the earthworm's ability to live in soil and also how touch-sensitive they are.