Wormocropolis

The Wormocropolis has transitioned to nesting entirely on land, making its home in the temperate and subtropical regions of Drake. They have developed spiracles to facilitate respiration on land. Their nests reach 1 meter tall and can be made up of hundreds of individual polyps. Much like their ancestor their nests are constructed with the bodies of polyps, forming an open topped dome. These polyps will start life as motile juveniles.

The juveniles have developed jointed limbs with jagged edges which allow them to dig through the soil. Their mouth parts have also developed, with the interior pestle becoming long and sharp, and fitting into a groove in the modified mortar. This new design is adapted to piercing the bodies of flora and fauna to feed on their internal fluids. Juveniles will leave the nest daily to feed on flora and fauna in the area. Their feeding usually results in the area surrounding the nest being sparse in flora save those with tough exteriors which the juveniles can't pierce. The juveniles will also dig into the soil to reach the roots of flora, and to create underground chambers for the nest to shelter its juveniles and eggs over winter. Mini Wormbacks make up the majority of the fauna in their diets, being easily exhumed during their nest digging and root foraging and offering little to no defense against the juveniles piercing mouth parts. Not all juveniles will eventually transition into polyps, as some are born sterile to serve as workers for the nest for their entire lives. These sterile juveniles can live for up to 200 days.

The workers and the juveniles both perform the same functions for the colony. These functions include guarding the nest from potential predation, gathering nutrients for the polyps, and fertilizing and protecting the eggs. To protect the nest from predation, workers will use their piercing mouth parts to jab at any attacking or intruding fauna. Though intruding fauna is a wide range of species ranging from large species like Springheels and Neosaucebacks to small species like wortopedes and pentamowers, so their effectiveness in defending the nest depends on the intruder. Gathering nutrients for the nest involves workers exiting the nest to forage on flora and fauna in the region, drinking their internal fluids. They will also bring detritus from the nests surroundings and incorporate their own excrement into the piles located at the polyps shallow root system, allowing them to absorb the nutrients and produce their own nutrient solution for the colony.



The workers role in fertilizing the eggs occurs mostly at the discretion of the polyps. The polyps produce eggs at their tail segment, with their tail leaves forming a semi-enclosed region between them with a slit allowing access to the eggs. The region also is filled with a nutrient rich solution to nourish the eggs and prevent it from drying out. Sperm is produced along the polyps joints and the sperm is transferred over from the joints to the egg capsules by the workers moving about the interior of the colony. The eggs will hatch anywhere from 5-7 days from fertilization.

Those juveniles which do transition into polyps will begin to transition within 20 days of hatching. They discard the pestle of their mouths and anchor themselves in the soil or onto other polyps. The joints of their limbs fuse and become their primary leaves, with secondary leaves growing from their tails. They also begin producing a thick calcite layer under their exoskeleton to provide greater support. The polyps will continue to grow in this state, reaching an individual length of 32 centimetres long. The calcite will continue to be produced throughout the polyps life, with struts of the calcite extending from their body joints to merge with other calcite struts from its neighbors, forming a lattice of calcite to support the nest. The polyps form the nests structure, produce fertilized eggs, serve as the main photosynthesizers and produce a nutrient solution which can sustain the juveniles should foraging prove unsuccessful.

The polyps will live for only a single year, as an adaptation to deal with the winter conditions of their habitats. As fall draws to a close groups of juveniles, sterile and fertile, will leave their parent nests to found new nests. Once they have found a new location they will dig into the soil to overwinter, deep enough to be below the frost line. There they will enter hibernation until spring. At first thaw they will exit hibernation and begin constructing a nest, digging out chambers as the fertile juveniles begin their transition into polyps. The nest will grow in size and numbers over the year, reaching 1 meter by midsummer. As fall approaches the polyps will produce more of their nutrient solution to increase the body mass of the juveniles, such that they will have enough fat stores to survive the winter. As a final sacrifice to the nest, the polyps die and are drained of fluids by the juveniles, with their husks left to fall off over winter and leaving the calcite supports in place. The established nest will retreat into its underground portion and enter hibernation until next spring, which will see the new year's nest building off of the calcite structure of the old nest. Some venturing juveniles will settle on or near the old bodies of scrollcones, using their silicon studs as a base to start from as well.

These adaptations are present in both their temperate and subtropical ranges, even given the lack of freezing conditions in the subtropical ranges. Nests in the subtropics also go through dormancy phases during winter, but are much less pronounced and serve only to allow the old polyps to die and new polyps to take their place.