Diamiarm

The diamiarm has replaced its ancestor in Maineiac Water Table. It evolved from a mutant population that evolved muscle-like structures in their mycelial arms. With the use of hormones, these arms can be moved. The flailing produced by these progenitors gave them an immediate advantage over their ancestors due to them being able to cover a wider area and potentially being able to ensnare and hold prey items in their arms, allowing them to replace them. In order to facilitate this behavior, the arms have developed tactoreceptors that allow them to feel their way around the cave. They also evolved statocysts inside the edges of their crystal shell. When combined, these simple receptors combined with its hormone-based 'nervous system' allow it to make coordinated movements and navigate the cave it dwells in. Their main form of locomotion depends on their orientation. When upside-down on the ceiling, they will grab the ceiling with one of their arms and release the one used to hold onto the ceiling before to swing its next arm into reach of the ceiling. The process then repeats. When moving along the ground, it will crawl along the floor using all four of its arms in an awkward manner. They climb up walls by reaching out with one of its arms and grabbing the wall before reaching out with an adjacent wall and grabbing a section of the wall that is further up. They generally prefer to dwell on the ceiling, but often find themselves tumbling down to the floor, where they will have to begin their arduous climb back to the cave ceiling. The diamiarm has evolved the means to consume the hard-shelled iron fauna. They now not only release enzymes, but ions that oxidize the pure iron shell of their prey. This allows them to break down the exoskeleton and access their prey's soft insides, which they dissolve and digest with their enzymes. They will often coil their arms around their prey so that they can expose them to more enzymes and break them down faster. This also makes it harder for prey to escape. The diamiarm has two modes of reproduction. The first are sexual spores, which are derived from their ancestor's self-fertilizing spores. However, instead of fertilizing their own spores and being left with a genetic copy, they will seek out other members of their species and mate with them. The two clouds of isogamous spores will then fertilize each other and become a zygote, which will develop into a new diamiarm. Juvenile diamiarms are little more than simple blobs of mycelia that gain nutrients through filter-feeding. Diamiarms can also reproduce via fragmentation, in which if an arm breaks off, it can grow into a new diamiarm.