So lately I've been working on a little speculative ecosystem project, picking back up the work I did about four years ago. A lot of those creatures were designed for prompts for an art challenge that I just happened decided to use in that way, but I was thinking how much I'd like to have an actual list of prompts geared towards the goal I set for myself. Which lead me to making up this, a little list of prompts based on very broad ecological concepts so as to be as applicable as possible to the widest possible range of different projects.
Producer - give me an autotroph ie. an animal that feeds directly on an energy source, like light, radiation, or chemicals
Primary Consumer - predator of the autotroph you just made (cows are predators of grass!)
Secondary Consumer - now what’s something that eats that animal.
Tertiary Consumer - or an “Apex predator”, an organism with no natural predators of its own
Decomposer - something that consumes the remains of any of the previous organisms.
Parasite of any of the above organisms
Hyperparasite ie. something that parasitizes that parasite
Coprophage - something that eats dung
Ecosystem engineer - an organism that creates habitats for other organisms
An organism with a hard shell, carapace, etc.
Durophagic predator of previous organism
An organism which occupies different trophic levels in its adult and immature forms
An organism that with a symbiotic relationship with any of the previous organisms
An autotroph small enough to fit on your fingertip
An autotroph small enough to fit in your hand
An autotroph taller than a house.
Autotroph with specialized defenses
Autotroph that depends on a symbiotic relationship
The organism the previous organism depends on
An organism that utilizes mimicry
An organism not visible to the naked eye
An R selected species - an organism which has many offspring, each with a low chance of survival
A K selected species - an organism which has few offspring, each with a high chance of survival
A keystone species - an organism who’s presence defines the ecosystem it is a part of, without it this ecosystem would not exist in the same state
An extremely specialized organism
This is formatted as a month-long challenge, but I don't think anyone needs to approach it that way if they want to do it.
Part of the goal of this is to not just design organisms, but to think about how each thing you design interacts with the other creatures, and how they form an ecosystem together!
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