Spec-Dinovember Day 14: Hoot Hoot, a nocturnal predatory pterosaur
Every night a great migration occurs, when counting total mass of animals involved it is the largest migration on the planet. This is the vertical migration of aquatic fauna from the depths to the surface waters. In large inland lakes this means that clouds of tiny crustaceans such as Daphnia are within arms reach every night for a creature capable of catching them. Pectenognathus pelecanus is a ctenochasmatid pterosaur that has capitalized on this available niche. They hunt by floating out upon the water and dipping their head below to sweep through dense patches of plankton. Their gular pouch is greatly expanded and highly elastic allowing them to gather a great deal of water before seiving. Their upper jaw is lined with thousands of thin, needle-like teeth that act as a filter, letting the water out and keeping the food in. Since their hunting is done at night their eyes have become very large and with a well developed nictitating membrane to help them see in dark waters. Peculiarly for a pterosaur, especially a long-bodied ctenochasmatid, P. pelecanus sleep perched within tree branches to avoid predators, a habit for which their webbed feet and claws are not well suited.
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Given the prompt name the obvious idea would be to make a pterosaur equivalent of an owl, and I did play with the idea of a large raptorial anurognathid. I dunno what got me on the idea of diel vertical migration, but I thought that would be a cool prey source as technically zooplankton are animals and this does count as a predator but only if you wanna get real pedantic about it. But anyway ctenochasmatids (and boreopterids wherever they fit) are weird and weirdly proportioned and all specialized in some variation of aquatic filter feeding so I wanted to do one, and I kind of managed to justify it.
