Gobroot
The Gobroot is a sedentary filter-feeder which lives in both shallow coastal waters and in the sand of the tidal zone of beaches. Due to their prolific, often asexual breeding, very quick maturation, and fast recolonization between populations, they are very common on sandy beaches subject to high tide. Their greenish coloration helps them hide in sands and water stained with tiny green photosynthesizers. This, as well as the fact very little of their bodies poke up above the sand at low tide, makes them hard to spot. Although they live in both shallow coastal waters and in the farther tidal zones of beaches, they are much more common on beaches, due to less competition, better habitat suitability, and fewer varieties of predators.
Juvenile Gobroots are weakly, free-swimming, roughly 4 mm, and resemble somewhat bloated Vinagobs with longer fins and no lights. They are very sensitive to specific patterns of colored lights, allowing them to orient towards beaches from the lights of adult Gobroots. Once the juveniles have selected a good spot, they create small burrows by digging with their fins and tail. When inside, they gradually metamorphose to a largely sedentary adult form. In the process, their two-pointed fins become thinner and useless for swimming, and instead function like roots to anchor it in the sand. Though adult Gobroots have little ability to move, if an adult Gobroot is only partly dragged out of its burrow, prolonged thrashing with its tail allows it to slip back in.
The Gobroot’s lips are a sort of gristly ring, like a pig snout. If touched, the lips contract, and the Gobroot buries itself into the sand to hide. During low tide, it closes its mouth very tightly to prevent water loss, and tucks its body further into its small burrow.
Most of a Gobroot’s body is a squishy watery blob of little nutritional value, much like a sea jelly. Most of a Gobroot’s nutrition is concentrated in its cartilage-like lips and whatever food contents were inside their stomachs at time of eating. Since most of their nutritional value comes from their gut contents, Gobroots contain the most nutrition during or just after high tide.
At time of evolution, adult Gobroots have very few predators, due to sparsely-inhabited habitats. (They don’t move enough to be caught by Tidal Danglewebs, their ancestor’s predator) However, most Gobroots are killed in their nigh-microscopic larval or juvenile stages. Predators of larval and juvenile Gobroots include (but are not limited to) Giluksips, Swarming Roufos, and even adult Gobroots if they end up on beaches before they’re too big to be eaten by Gobroots.
With their alcohol-producing Ribbon-Tailed Detriti symbiotes, their bodies produce small amounts of alcohol. They are adapted to tolerate alcohol in their bodies and extract nutrition from it.
Reproduction
They elevate themselves a few millimeters off the ground at night and flash their lights. It is easy to miss to creatures with poor night vision, or creatures whose heads are far off the ground.
During the winter, cold temperatures (especially at night) trigger them to sexually reproduce. They sexually reproduce from a combination of tidal changes (measured by water flow and volume), temperatures falling below a certain threshold (as a proxy of nighttime), and exposure to particular sets and flashing rates of multicolored lights. However, only 5 cm of water over them and temperature are truly necessary to trigger spawning; the lights merely amplify and coordinate the spawning.
While not “smart”, exactly, they have surprisingly sophisticated neural and hormonal circuits for timing spawning events. Dense aggregations of Gobroots spawn late at night in the wintertime, within ten minutes of the same time, with a clockwork-like regularity.
Later in winter, adult Gobroots flash their lights in coordinated ways every few seconds. The lights help orient juvenile Gobroots to the beach, where they can then take root. Gobroots lack a mechanism to determine when an area is too crowded to settle. However, this is compensated for by having low habitat requirements and the adults’ fairly high rate of predation. (Although overall mortality is lower on beaches at time of evolution)
As trivia, they are very versatile in cooking. They have a salty, sour, seaweed-esque taste, with only a trace of rum raisin flavoring found in one of its ancestors, the Vinagob. The lips are similar to calamari rings.