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Description
Planet: Xenosulia

Common name: Sponge bison

Scientific name: Oocephalus rhisopus

Size: Males; 2.5 – 3 meters in height. Females: 2 – 4 meters starting at the ground

Diet: aeroplankton

Habitat and range: Akasaran desert

Reproduction: protandrous hermaphroditism, with individuals born as male and becoming sedentary hermaphrodites. They give birth to live young that crawl out of their mother

While aerobic filter feeders are common in most open places, the winds can get especially strong in the desert, facilitating this lifestyle. However, like plants, the sedentary xenospongozoans do not grow as well as they do in grasslands, with less water available to them. This provides filter feeding animals with less competition, with sitostome species especially prevalent here. While the lack of water poses and issue for them, they’re able to occupy a greater variety of niches, with a large assortment of different mouth structures found here specialised for catching different aeroplankton and algae species.

With aeroplankton providing a plentiful source of food, sitostomes are less limited in size than most of the desert’s inhabitants. Among the largest of the Akasaran sitostomes is Oocephalus rhisopus, their herds found roaming the deserts in large numbers. While they do face some risk of predation from some of the desert’s larger carnivores, predators generally ignore older individuals in favour of smaller prey like pikonids. Their size provides them with plenty of protection, so they tend to be slow moving, with little else in the way of defence. For greater stability, their bodies are compact, their legs roughly forming an equilateral triangle, at least during the male phase.

Like most sitostomes, they are protandrous, becoming hermaphroditic later in age. In the hermaphroditic life stage, among those who live long enough, they grow much larger, burying themselves half in the ground and becoming sedentary. This way, the niche they inhabit is similar to that of large xenospongozoans in other areas. In the desert, the sponges tend to be smaller, and much less numerous, so they don’t face too much competition.

The sedentary hermaphrodites are visited frequently by herds of males, who provide them with water in exchange for injecting male gametozoans. With the specialised structure of their oral proboscis, using this to mate is impractical, with the males’ tentacles used to deposit gametozoans instead, after extracting them from the proboscis. During the process of mating, the larger hermaphrodites will also leave gametozoans on the males, which will remain until they journey to another hermaphrodite. This allows the hermaphrodites to mate with each other despite being sedentary, the males acting as pollinators.

Description
Planet: Xenosulia

Common name: Sponge bison

Scientific name: Oocephalus rhisopus

Size: Males; 2.5 – 3 meters in height. Females: 2 – 4 meters starting at the ground

Diet: aeroplankton

Habitat and range: Akasaran desert

Reproduction: protandrous hermaphroditism, with individuals born as male and becoming sedentary hermaphrodites. They give birth to live young that crawl out of their mother

While aerobic filter feeders are common in most open places, the winds can get especially strong in the desert, facilitating this lifestyle. However, like plants, the sedentary xenospongozoans do not grow as well as they do in grasslands, with less water available to them. This provides filter feeding animals with less competition, with sitostome species especially prevalent here. While the lack of water poses and issue for them, they’re able to occupy a greater variety of niches, with a large assortment of different mouth structures found here specialised for catching different aeroplankton and algae species.

With aeroplankton providing a plentiful source of food, sitostomes are less limited in size than most of the desert’s inhabitants. Among the largest of the Akasaran sitostomes is Oocephalus rhisopus, their herds found roaming the deserts in large numbers. While they do face some risk of predation from some of the desert’s larger carnivores, predators generally ignore older individuals in favour of smaller prey like pikonids. Their size provides them with plenty of protection, so they tend to be slow moving, with little else in the way of defence. For greater stability, their bodies are compact, their legs roughly forming an equilateral triangle, at least during the male phase.

Like most sitostomes, they are protandrous, becoming hermaphroditic later in age. In the hermaphroditic life stage, among those who live long enough, they grow much larger, burying themselves half in the ground and becoming sedentary. This way, the niche they inhabit is similar to that of large xenospongozoans in other areas. In the desert, the sponges tend to be smaller, and much less numerous, so they don’t face too much competition.

The sedentary hermaphrodites are visited frequently by herds of males, who provide them with water in exchange for injecting male gametozoans. With the specialised structure of their oral proboscis, using this to mate is impractical, with the males’ tentacles used to deposit gametozoans instead, after extracting them from the proboscis. During the process of mating, the larger hermaphrodites will also leave gametozoans on the males, which will remain until they journey to another hermaphrodite. This allows the hermaphrodites to mate with each other despite being sedentary, the males acting as pollinators.