Gut Anemoweeds

Gut anemoweeds split from their ancestor and continued their trend towards greater colony complexity. Zooids are now completely incapable of free-living, and thus the zoon is considered a true individual organism. Gut anemoweeds are far more active than their ancestor; though they are capable of long periods of inactivity where they cling to a rock, plant, nest, or driftwood island and behave like flora, they also regularly traverse the seafloor like starfish or limpets or "swim" about like some anemones in search of food. They are opportunists which can feed from a variety of food sources as long as it's slow or sessile. They are very common in a variety of sunlit undersea communities such as reefs, forests, and meadows, and being planimals they are usually found alone and don't form ground cover.

Gut anemoweeds are named for the presence of a mouth and blind gut organone derived from the holdfast. As the holdfast already ate whatever was on the surface of what they clung to, it easily shifted into a mouth-like structure and eventually a gut. The gut is lined with completely unrecognizably derived zooids, digestive zooids, which are almost completely inside-out--their endoderm is entirely exposed so that digestive enzymes may be released directly into the gut of the zoon. The liquified meals are then absorbed and the nutrients distributed through the zoon by the shared circulatory system. The mouth itself is formed from bundled lobes of the original holdfast and is roughly radially symmetric. Its shape grants stability on the seafloor and can wrap around food to pull it into the stomach.

On the opposite end from the mouth, gut anemoweeds branch considerably. Their branches no longer break off as buds, making them distinct body parts now. Each branch ends in a lobe, which is roughly spherical. Though these lobes resemble leaves, it would be more accurate to call them gonad organones. The previous method of releasing gametes has been optimized into these individual pods, which fill with gametes and then eventually burst open. The gonad zooids of female gut anemoweeds are larger than those of males so that they may produce large eggs with considerable yolk content, but the gonad organones are still the same size; as a result, females produce fewer gametes than males. After fertilization, the embryo forms an embryonic zoon before it even hatches, allowing it to already have the benefit of organones upon hatching. This also means that gut anemoweeds do not form mosaic individuals anymore, as the life phase where unrelated individuals could stick together now only occurs inside an egg. In addition to yolk, unhatched individuals also gain a considerable amount of energy from photosynthesis compared to adults.

The inside of a gut anemoweed includes a large inner cavity. This is filled with fluid and serves as a hydrostatic skeleton. On dissection, a new zooid type becomes visible from the inner surface: a stem zooid. Stem zooids are embryonic and derived not from gathering zooids, but from founders, and they serve to ensure that there is always a zooid which can become any other kind of zooid available at any point of the zoon's body. Though gatherer zooids can still produce different types of zooid, they are less efficient at doing so due to their more mature state and will only do so if there is, for whatever reason, no stem zooid nearby. Stem zooids are also able to break off into the inner cavity and reattach at different points; this may happen if a large number of stem zooids die, such as from a disease which targets them, requiring them to be redistributed so that the zoon may recover more quickly.

Most of the zooids of gut anemoweeds that are shared with their ancestor behave similarly to their ancestral counterparts. Gatherer zooids no longer filter feed, instead focusing primarily on photosynthesizing and observing their surroundings, saving a lot of energy. Like their ancestor, gut anemoweeds have an awareness of their body shape which is used to coordinate growth and healing.

There are many species of gut anemoweed--and many morphologies found in each species as well. As the arrangement of zooids is controlled by the nervous system instead of directly by genetics, though important body features are maintained well by instincts, their exact size and arrangement is prone to massive differences between individuals--even ones that are genetically identical--due to the influence of their environment and (very limited) capacity for learning. Species can only be identified for certain through genetic testing. Still, some species do trend towards more or less branching, larger or smaller mouths, and longer or shorter bodies. They are very rare in polar biomes, but a few polar species do exist nonetheless.