
祝日 / Permanent Vacation

Janaina Medeiros
ojovivo
trying on a metaphor
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
Claire Keane

#extradirty
hello vonnie

blake kathryn
DEAR READER
Sade Olutola

if i look back, i am lost
Keni
wallacepolsom

ellievsbear
cherry valley forever
we're not kids anymore.
will byers stan first human second
Mike Driver
seen from Türkiye

seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Pakistan
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Bangladesh

seen from Singapore
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from Palestinian Territories

seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
@mrmeepmerp
imagine living somewhere flat….with like……almost no hills…..what do you guys do for fun get picked off by birds of prey or
the pretty prince and his cool guardian
when it finally happens they shouldn’t lower the flags to half mast, they should raise them to 1.5 mast. add some mast to that mast. maybe some balloons too.
wound dressings and bandages are lingerie for the enlightened pervert
the lovers
Order of the Tender Apple Slice I've received a handful of commissions to draw people's pets as monks but this is definitely my favorite one so far
(blue death feigning beetles)
good news everyone
junicorn
day 13
‘cathedral’
save me, rice mixed with some bullshit
good news everyone
humiliating to be attracted to a conventionally attractive person. I thought I was a more sensitive and refined pervert than this
Talking about groups of animals and their group names ‘parliament of owls’ etc. Mentioned that it’s called a ‘blessing of unicorns’ and my dad misheard me and was like ‘a legacy of worms?’ I’m like you know what sure 🪱 that’s what a group of worms is called now
you know what? I want dragons with ontogenetic niche partitioning.
niche partioning is a concept from ecology wherein groups within a species expand into different ecological niches so they're not competing with one another, right? so for example, sexual niche partitioning happens when sexual dimorphism means that one sex eats different things / occupies different spaces / etc. as another within the same species. you have one species that occupies multiple niches within the ecosystem.
ontogenetic niche partitioning is when this happens as a result of developmental changes. paternal care tends to obliterate this partitioning--hard to have your juveniles eating something different from your adults if the adults are feeding them!--so we just don't see it very often in mammals or birds, but it's quite common in other species, especially invertebrates. for example, a caterpillar and a butterfly are examples of classic niche partitioning, even though every butterfly will occupy both niches over the course of its life. you don't have to have a big fancy chrysalis transformation to engage in ontogenetic niche partitioning, but those transformations are a pretty big sign that it's happening in a given species.
anyway, it's most common in vertebrates among fish, lizards and snakes these days, especially monitor lizards, where juveniles will occupy a different (often arboreal or otherwise sheltered) niche from adults and hunt different prey until they get big enough that the juvenile niche. there are some good reasons to think that some dinosaurs might have engaged in ontogenetic niche partitioning, especially the bigger species, too. we think sea turtles might do it, although that's hard to say because we don't know very much about sea turtle development once the hatchlings go back to the sea.
the neat thing about ontogenetic niche partitioning is that it allows a given ecology to host a much larger population size for a given species than would otherwise be the case, because the total space occupied by that species is spread across a lot wider niche space. this is especially relevant for, say, a large carnivore that eats livestock.
basically, what if dragons are just the very oldest, reproductively mature members of their species, and the common wall lizard or whatever is just a juvenile that might or might not survive long enough to reproduce? imagine if dragon eggs are very small with big clutches of little insectivorous hatchlings that are eaten by anything that comes by, any of which might have the potential to become a great fire-breathing monster if it lives long enough.
imagine that dragon society. do people know that the hatchlings and the dragons are the same species? (they might not: there are real examples of people mistaking ontogenetically niche separated groups for independent species in their own right.) if dragons are sapient but the sapience takes time to develop, what does that say about the nature of sapience itself? how does a society work and transfer wealth if you remove parental care?
so many possibilities.
Optimus prime isopod be like: autobots, roll up!
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i originally misread this as autopods so. what if they were all isopods.