Hitchhiker Hexspourus

The hitchhiker hexspourus split from its ancestor, the polar hexspourus, and has adapted to live in the microbe-rich microclimates created by the orbital voltflora. There the flora's pressure and heat creates a large pool of warm water around the base. Most did not change much, simply becoming more adapted to their new watery home, but a specific branch began specializing in consuming hitchhiker gildlings. Although, since the hexspourus' cells were larger than the gildling's, they could eat the individual cells. The hexspourus with more cells than its relatives generally were able to consume more gildlings. This push toward multicellularity resulted in the hexspourus' current form. While their appearance has changed somewhat drastically, only a small amount of specialization is found in the organism. They now form into a shape similar to a tube flattened on one side. The flatter side on the bottom now has cells that produce many more cilia on the outside, while the rest barely have any at all to lessen drag. The greatest change, though, is on the inside of the tube, where a primitive digestive system is formed. The front is now almost completely composed of its ancestor's chemoreceptors, which detect concentrations of gildlings, then release the same chemicals as its ancestors, which help guide the rest of the cells in the colony toward the food source. When a clump of gildlings passes through the area with the chemoreceptors, they come to a section where their are more flagellum than chemoreceptors. When a flagellum touches a gildling cell, it curls inward quickly, grasping and pulling on the cell. When multiple flagellum do this at once, it causes the cell to rupture, and the nutrients to move to the next section of cells. There, modified chemoreceptors form a mesh that lasts for the majority of the colony's length, taking in not the telltale chemicals the gildlings produce, but actually absorbing needed nutrients, which will be redistributed to the rest of the colony. In addition to these, it also has tiny cilia which keep fluid moving through it. It now has a specific way of reproducing. Instead of simply using binary fission, the colony will wait until it has grown big enough, then it will dissolve all the specialized flagellum and chemoreceptors inside the digestive track, except for a few graspers on the flattened bottom. When a gildling enters the colony, the graspers will pull it down, where the cells will have patches in its cell membrane that contain the same proteins that allow gildling leaves to join cells. It will release a spore into the gildling, and release the gildling. The colony will continue to do this until the colony's reserves are exhausted. The spore will not begin to grow until the gildling does, insuring that it is in a hospitable environment, then feed on the gildling until it is large enough to leave and begin to feed off other gildlings. This method of reproduction not only ensures good growing conditions, but has played on the gildling's spores hardiness, allowing it to survive in space and spread to other volcanic biomes on Sagan4. While it generally lives inside the voltflora micro-climates, it can stay outside the water for long periods of time to eat gildlings, although it must return to the water eventually.