babe wake up new postexodus species dropped. stop looking at how shitty i drew the legs stop sto
yap under cut
Myrmecoleons (usually dubbed myrms) are large hive arthropods with an eusocial society comparable to that of ants and bees. They hail from the equatorial belt of Virrker, a smaller planet with higher oxygen levels, thus why insectoid/invertebrate fauna gets so big (like prehistoric bugs!). They are somewhat of a rarity outside of their homeplanet, as they like to keep to their own (relatively) hyperorganized selves in general and they don't get along well with humans and pegasi due to a two decade long war that went on between them not long after first contact.
They have some less developed internal bone structure to support their large size and are technically vertebrates. Their thorax raised over generations and resulted in a centaur-esque body plan, their abdomen consisting both of their lower bodies and their tails (just an elongation that stores fat). They have iron-based oxygen transport like ours and are mesothermic, but they handle high temperature better than cold. In temperature drop they can essentially shut down to conserve energy for some time, but depending on how long this goes on it can leave lasting damage. They are omnivorous predators with high energy needs and tend to gravitate toward meats and sugary fruit/nectar from larger flowering plants. They don't really eat plant matter in itself, but they can process it. They have a mostly unidirectional respiratory system that consists of inhaling through the neck slits and exhaling out the abdominal vents, their airway does connect to their mouths but that is solely for vocalization (this usually doesn't mean speech, as myrm communication is a combination of wing whirring/stridulation/clicking and pheromone signals. They can't talk very well due to the lack of lips/teeth/anything that would make their articulation remotely comprehensible, so they tend to sign to xenos).
Myrms live in hives across a fair portion of their planet, which they build up from the ground using plant/wood-based pulp combined with their saliva, or rarely settle for a tunnel system underground. There are three major megahives ruling over a vast amount of their territory and dominating xenopolitically. There is one Queen per hive, but it tends to go along the lines of hives living in the major hives' territories having their own Queen that answers to the megahive's (i really don't have a better name for it) Queen. Hives are socially structured the same as eusocial insects; Queen at the tippy top, soldiers defending and policing at the second highest rank, and workers. All of the soldiers and workers are the Queen's children, but drones tend to get traded around between hives. Drones revel in a lavish lifestyle but they have no authority over even workers and pretty much have the only employment option of walking sperm bank. Some frown upon this as oppression, many outcasted spacer drones are up and about, and rights movements exist but this seems to be just labeled basic nature by the trad. Those forelimb "wings" on drones flare out for display also i just forgot to include that because i'm stupid.
Despite how cold and segmented they sound myrms within a hive are extremely close and are basically programmed to have godawful seperation anxiety. They have chemical supplements and all for lonely spacers but being away from their own kind in general is detrimental to their physical health as much as it is for their mental. Their tendency to travel in groups for any occasion and their natural personal space invasive demeanor often make them overwhelming for other sophonts, especially given they sound like a cicada swarm and half of them have probably dragged their antennae across your entire body by now.
