Plentscraper



Splinting from their ancestors the plentscrapers have become fully faunal. Although they never settle down and become sessile they do still undergo a limited form of metamorphosis. They have developed scraping mouthparts, simple blades of semi-mineralized chitin which allow them to shave off small amounts of food that are more easily swallowed. As they remain mobile throughout their lives, spawning now takes place in the small ponds and pools of the watersheds. Juveniles are aquatic and look much like those of their ancestor. They crawl on the bottom of whatever water body they were spawned in until they reach a length of half a centimetre, at which point they leave the water and metamorphose. Sperm and egg production do not start until after they have left the water, beginning simultaneously in the early spring of their second year.

Adults do not have the slug-like feet their ancestor used to get around. Instead, they move by rippling their bodies up and down, using a pair of small spikes on the sides of their segments for traction. Because of this, they no longer use nearly as much water. They have a simple cuticle between each segment derived from the covering of the foot which helps to prevent debris from accumulating.

They are named for their tendency to feed on the relatively soft bodies of asterplents, but they will also feed on homosaraetes. Such feeding is rarely fatal to all but the youngest homosaraetes or grassterplents, with fern asterplents usually surviving as well, though often with significant scarring. Their more active lifestyle has seen the development of their first pair of eyes from simple pigment cups into pinhole type eyes, which better allow them to identify potential meals and to navigate to and from the breeding pools. These eyes are covered by transparent chitin which, while not a lens, helps to prevent them from drying out or becoming contaminated by debris.