Ephemeral Sapworm

Ephemeral Sapworms, which split from their ancestor, live only during wetter seasons. Like houseflies, their lives are short: it takes 4-6 days for an egg to grow to an adult, with a maximum lifespan of about 23 days, though most are eaten by predators or mangled by flying accidents before then.

Ephemeral Sapworms are most active at dawn and dusk, primarily in the morning hours. They become active after sunrise, generally hiding and resting after 10:00 AM. They may rest on the trunks of blackflora or within the blooms of Maulwarts, and occasionally the spore chambers or blooms of other blackflora of similar size. Ephemeral Sapworms exist in smaller swarms in Fermi Desert, due to the lower density of its hosts there.

Because they have co-evolved with Maulwarts to drink their sap-like nectar, the adults' diets have less sap. The tongues of adults are not as sharp as most Sapworms, for lack of need to puncture bark and suck sap. Where Maulwarts are scarcer, they may suck sap from Razorbark spore chambers. However, this puts them into competition with their better-adapted ancestors, and only their slightly keener senses for sniffing out Razorbark (and descendants') spore chambers and more specific feeding times with more vigorous activity makes this viable.

Ephemeral Sapworms mate in swarms around clusters of Maulwarts. Unusually for Sapworms, they have some reproductive differentiation: especially well-fed Ephemeral Sapworms have longer cloacal segments, helping them lay eggs deeper into the soil. Ephemeral Sapworms can detect longer cloacal segments while mating and choose to fertilize more of their eggs accordingly. After mating, they all lay eggs (for they are hermaphrodites).Ephemeral Sapworms then investigate Maulwart hosts, tapping at fissures in the host flora’s bark with their tongues and inspecting density of litter on the ground before laying eggs. Ephemeral Sapworms have a lifetime egg output of 180-220 eggs, and lay them in clusters. The eggs, each about 0.1 mm long, are laid underneath 5 mm to 1 cm of floral material, depending on local litter and soil conditions. Usually, the eggs are laid under Maulwart bark pieces, which are hard, bitter, and unappealing to most detritivores until heavily decayed, reducing likelihood of disturbance. Because the eggs are laid under floral material and the larvae remain just slightly underground, predators of their eggs and larvae are different from most sapworms. Ephemeral Sapworm eggs can exist in a dormant state for months. Seasonal changes and rain prompt the eggs to hatch. Early on, the larvae feed on sap from the Maulwart's major surface-level roots, before quickly sucking out sap from the base of the stem. At this time, Maulwarts usually shed their bark, making it easier to suck sap from the bases of the flora. They only become largely crepescular as adults, feeding almost constantly unless it gets too hot.

Like Sapworms in general, Ephemeral Sapworms need little water. They get most of what they need from a diet of sap, but occasionally suck up dew that has accumulated in the fissures of its host's bark.

Ephemeral Sapworms taste conspicuously different from other sapworms, due to accumulating the taste of the coffee-flavored nectar that is most of their diet. Most predators find them less appealing to eat than their relatives, and the smaller ones more easily poisoned by them may leave them half-eaten or let them go. Some of the smaller Silkrugg species with better vision just let them go, without even a bite, once they’re close enough to distinguish them from their similar-looking relatives, Nectarworms. Ephemeral Sapworms are nonetheless commonly eaten, especially by large fauna that need to eat many Ephemeral Sapworms at once to suffer ill effect. Egg-specialist Minikruggs are a major threat to their eggs, and one species isn’t deterred at all by the coffee-like taste of the eggs.

Although they look superficially similar to Nectarworms, they're actually less related than lions and tigers are to each other, and utterly incapable of hybridizing. Its mostly unremarkable ancestor started on a path towards specializing in the spore chambers of the Razorbark, Maulwarts' ancestor, several million years before Nectarworms' appearance, and Nectarworms genetically diverged still further from blackflora-specialist sapworms. Their mouthparts, reproductive habits and physiology, diets, life histories, and even predators of their eggs and young vary significantly.