Swarming Roufos
Outcompeting their ancestor, Swarming Roufos are various filter-feeding Roufos which are named for their habit of travelling in large swarms, filter-feeding on large blooms of plankton and occasionally eating small prey. To better process the food they catch in their gills, an opening has been made between the gills and the inside of the mouth—instead of digesting the food it catches this way inside its cells like more primitive asterzoans, they can move their mouth such to suck the captured food particles into its mouth and swallow them. Coincidentally, this also moves water through their gills far more effectively than their nostrils and has become their main way of respiring while staying still. Though this may appear to cause their respiration to be very similar to that of Terran ray-finned fish, it’s actually backwards—instead of pumping water from their mouth through their gills, they suck water through their gills into their mouth. They have lost their lateral jaw spikes, as they did not need them.
There are many species of Swarming Roufo. They can be found in reefs, the open ocean, coastlines, and nearly anywhere else where there is a lot of plankton. Their colors vary, from silvery open ocean species to emerald or violet species in coasts and reefs where there is lots of flora. They are infrequent in polar waters, as there is less food there, but those that do live in the poles often form smaller swarms and some may even migrate in the winter.
Like their ancestor, Swarming Roufos mate by “holding hands” with their fins and give live birth to radially symmetric babies. Their larvae often form shoals with one another rather than adults, as they are not fast enough to keep up, but once the tail fin is developed they usually join the shoals of adults.