Goblati
The Goblati replaces its ancestor in the hazard-strewn East Glicker Tropical Beach environment. The Goblati is a small, squishy, slow-moving, largely nocturnal organism dependent on water to breed. Like a mouse, it survives through nocturnality, prolific numbers, and sheer skittishness making it run or hide whenever it's startled.
Diet
Adult Goblatis pluck Rooted Leafstars from the sand with their “lips” and swallow them whole, digesting them with relatively weak stomach acids. It also eats decaying matter, mostly decaying flora washed up onto the beach. Its attraction to the smell of decaying flora often lures it to one of its predators, the Tidal Dangleweb. Larval Goblatis live in tidal pools, eating microbes, especially Continentadoras and Beachadoras.
Physiology
Seen from the mouth downward, its body is arranged in a flower-like radial symmetry: it has four top "petals", four petals growing from the spaces between each top "petal", and a stem-like tail.
The Goblati has eight eyes, arranged into simple optic cups. Its better vision allows it to spot predators and flee from them when they're farther away.
The prongs of its spokes are gristly, bone-like bits reinforced with strontium compounds. Goblati typically moves forward by pushing its tentacle-tail underneath its body, adjusting its two back-spokes forward, then moving its one front-spoke forward. It always supports its weight on three limbs as it moves, making it stable. Its back spokes, something like lizard legs, aren't directly beneath its body, while its front spoke is on its "chest". While a Goblati moves slowly, it still moves more efficiently than its ancestor's wriggling and flopping. By using its tail to push off from an obstacle (such as a rock or crystalflora), it has enough momentum to briefly roll on its spoke-like legs, or tuck in its spokes and roll like a tiny watermelon.
Due to Goblatis’ flower-like symmetry, it can just as easily move on one side as another, but the strontium claws of its less-used limbs grow longer and sharper than its typically-used limbs. By rapidly collapsing its limbs, it can use these sharp claws to cut itself free from a web. Its quicker and more versatile movement patterns help it dodge obstacles (especially Caltrop Crystal descendants) with more ease and help it break free of Tidal Danglewebs, another predator. When attacked, or even startled enough, it rapidly flickers its lights green for one second. The brief, single-colored display is less conspicuous than the lengthier, multicolored display of its ancestor, helping it evade predators while also warning others of its kind. The flickering signal triggers any nearby Goblati to run away, much like the raised tails of white-tailed deer signal other deer to escape.
Its tail moves with a system of water and air pockets, making it somewhat similar to a pneumatic robot arm or a starfish arm. Its legs, however, move with simple muscles, concentrated at the base of the limbs.
Goblati numbers boom whenever outbreaks of Wormrot lower the numbers of its primary predator, the Beach Arthrothere.
Behavior
Goblati behaviors are all reflexive, based on a few rules. One such rule makes them move towards large, high-contrast areas when attacked. At night, this is often the ocean, as it's darker than the surrounding soil. In the morning and at sunset, this is usually the deep shade of large crystalflora. Around sunset, when its light signals are slightly less conspicuous than at night, it lures in other Goblatis to mate. They then spawn in tidal pools. The microscopic offspring filter-feed in the pools, growing rapidly into miniature, 1-cm Goblatis. Goblatis are still able to reproduce by cloning, ejecting larval copies of themselves into pools.