sir/maim

Aves / 20s / crawling back to tumblr I currently am into Tristamp & TLT but the latter brainrot is more extensive I am always into plants (including paleobotany), birds, specbio, sci-fi/fantasy, and art. thank u @fuzzygiantworm for the stunning header

[gothseparatist]

got my ass completed handed to my by The Left Hand of Darkness

[pine-rhyme]

Harowhark study because i got the flu (Nonegesimitis).

[lizzybizzyart]

“Do I have Ortus’s eyes? Are these ones mine? I never really looked at them— Beloved, what were my eyes like?”

That which was buried insensate said quite calmly, “She asked me not to tell you.”

[moldofthewater]

Babs, Ianthe, Corona.

[gothseparatist]

The homeworld of Sersen and her species, the Fanren. One human name for it is "Janus" [might change this to something Sanskrit-derived] but the native name for it would literally translate to "THE Bound Soil Horizon" or "First Sister". It is a tidally-locked planet orbiting an orange dwarf. The much smaller ocean coverage than Earth contributes to it having episodic plate tectonics instead of mobile, which has major ramifications both in terms of geology and in terms of life. Size is a little smaller than the Earth.

[stuckinapril]

Daily affirmations

[marcelshorjian]

> THE JESTER

[pierogish]

Exploring

[gothseparatist]

having to move to the west or something not bc hrt was made illegal in FL or anything like that (I can get illegally lol) but bc im lonely is fucking funny I’m so depressed and every dating app is so bad now

[gothseparatist]

we now have terrain baby

also am reminded I started one of Sers' homeworld but uhh i literally cannot find the file other than this screenshot, really hope it is just on old computer lol

[gothseparatist]

Lares basic dominant vegetation biome map using some assets from this wikipedia image by Ville Koistinen

in addition to contemporary Earth biomes, there are two further habitat types:

Radiant Desert: barrens where UV (and potentially heat as well) are deciding factor for lack of vegetation, these occur along equator wherever cloud cover dips below a certain annual threshold where UV-damage cannot be mitigated sufficiently by botaniforms of this planet

Polar Forest: A type of deciduous forest where leaves are shed not due to cold, but mostly due to lack of light for half the year, these are much more mild areas than Taiga and Tundra, with climates similar to parts Scotland (whereas a lot of Tundra in Lares would be comparable to Iceland) these once existed on Earth e.g. Gondwana polar forest

Permanent ice sheets are not present on Lares save for on a few tall mountains.

[ghostsandyoumightdie]

I love the resurgence of the PJO fandom, because I keep being like, "Oh cool, a sort of emo-leaning Harrowhark modern-AU design-- wait, hope, it's that Hades boy again."

[cobaltegg]

as a contiuation of shed-be-catholic, i reflected on my my mormon friends in HS and decided harrow would be a repressed weeaboo

[gothseparatist]

Purple gallinule on spatterdock (waterlily relative) in the marshes and American crocodile at a boating dock in the mangrove-dominated shoreline

Everglades, February 12th 2023

[gothseparatist]

illustrations by Georges Barbier

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

This ask is not about dinosaurs, actually... before the evolution of grasses during the Cenozoic, what could have been the equivalent of grass-like ecosystems (prairies, savanna...) during the Mesozoic?

F E R N PRAIRIES

seriously, there were lots of different kinds of prairies. fern, horsetail, cycad, the list goes on. Basically, different kinds of low-lying plants would do the prairie thing in ecosystems where forests couldn't get a foothold.

but, there were a lot fewer of them than today. because grasses are kind of OP, and have their own photosynthesis system, so they are able to grow and take over many places that would have been forests before grasses took over. That doesn't mean there weren't prairies, but there were just less. and a lot of things were more scrubland than prairie, too.

It's honestly amazing how much grass has changed the ecology of the planet. they are the biggest bioengineers of the cenozoic after people...

[gothseparatist]

Adding to this:

C4 grasses dominate the tropics but in higher latitudes the dominant grasses have same type of photosynthesis as almost all other plants (and there are non-grass C4 photosynthesizers too).

grasses are generally dominant wherever trees are suppressed. biggest suppressors are disturbances like fire and herbivory (how grazing mammals feed is different than most dinosaurs) and rainfall too low to support trees. it also helps grasses are wind-pollinated which has great synergy with the above and with the increasing seasonality we see over the Cenozoic. the herbivory aspect is frequtently ignored but shouldn't be imo, studies with white rhinos demonstrated that if rhinos were excluded, grasses decreased

i say generally because there are exceptions and they tend to have traits that put them more in line with how Mesozoic communities were:

Here is a fern field in Hawai'i an area with no native grazing herbivores (but decent disturbance rate due to volcanoes so openings occur anyway) + constant humidity + tropical climate. I've seen parts of South FL like this as well and FL has many Cretaceous floral elements

Prior to grasses, at least before Cenozoic, ferns likely were the dominant plant in disturbed areas. Cycads and other gymnosperms were important back then too but I have yet to find examples of some that took on more grass-like ecological roles

Most ferns during Mesozoic are NOT closely related to the ones we see today. ~80-90% of ferns we see today belong to Polyopsid group which emerged at the earliest 100 mya.

Some of the older fern groups get pretty weird with some even looking grass-like:

Schizae pusilla of New Jersey, Shizaea is part of a very old group of ferns. There are other species e.g. in South Africa and that one I know is more adapted to seasonally dry conditions.

similarly old horesetails being quite dominant:

montane and poor soil ecosystems which naturally exclude megaherbivores tend to be dominated by woody shrubs or non-grass herbaceous plants e.g. Fynbos in Southern Africa, rift scrub in Rwanda, various Australian ridges, moorland and heath in Europe, sagebrush in North America, all the whacky paramo guys so those are good sources of inspiration too even if they lean more on angiosperms

[gothseparatist]

so funny being extremely poly but effectively monogamous bc finding compatible ppl is a nightmare when your dating pool is already heinous since u insist on staying in north fl and literally every lgbt person moves away after 22

legit had more success with this at /14/ than now lmfao