Friday 9 May 2014

Symbiotic Polyps

You are eaten by a zoantharia.  It thinks you are tasty food.  Luckily, over time, it has been letting lifeforms like you live on inside it for a little while, because you can continue photosynthesising and making sugar while inside.

In fact, it has evolved to provide the chemicals you need as food to extend your life inside it.

This adaptation has now reached the point where it can contain multiple photosynthesising algae, and they can live on inside it indefinitely.

You have entered a symbiotic relationship, and will never live outside again, getting food and protection, for the price of a few sugars.  You are part of a symbiotic polyp, and will evolve along with it from now on.

As you are soft and small, and now sweet, you are quite vulnerable to anything bigger and hungry that happens to be near you.  An adaptation to create some kind of armour might be useful right about now, although it comes at a cost.

Skeleton?
No Skeleton?

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