Luscan

Luscans have four life stages: egg, larva, pupa, and adult. The larva is aquatic and cannot survive outside water, while the adult is adapted for terrestrial life in moist wetlands.

The larva's niche is that of a small aquatic detritivore that lives on the bottom of bodies and water. Its eyes are roughly as primitive as flatworm eyes, and can only sense light and dark. This is still useful since this allows larvae to move away from bright areas in search of shade, as they are sensitive to UV light and vulnerable to any predator that spots them.

As luscan larvae have a preference for shady spots, they are often found beneath the leaves of sum-humgroves and lurcups. They may also be found beneath floating objects, mostly aggregations of adult ocean tristages or swamp douostages. Younger, smaller larvae may even use ocean tristages or swamp douostages for transport by attaching themselves to the undersides of these organisms.

Luscan larvae are active both day and night, though the timing of activity varies depending on environmental conditions. Larvae intermittently enter periods of reduced activity in small, enclosed areas inaccessible to predators. (or mostly inaccessible, anyway) In essence, larvae take multiple naps each day in whichever bedroom is nearest. Their tendency to avoid well-lit areas and enter periods of reduced activity in safe areas on a nearly-unpredictable schedule helps protect them from the swamplents that prey upon them. However, this strategy is less effective against marsh loafshells, which use a sense of echolocation, scent, and touch to locate prey.

While a larval luscan has a leech-like body shape, it cannot swim, and instead glides on a trail of slime through undulations of its body, much like a snail. Like its distant ancestor, the centifoi, the luscan can rotate on its yaw axis (or yaw) to avoid objects. Since it can't move freely in the vertical axis, it needs a boost from climbing the sides of a stream bed or the roots of sum-humgrove or lurcup to reach the undersides of ocean tristages or swamp douostages.

Larval luscans form cocoons after attaching themselves to the underside of an ocean tristage or swamp douostage. Within the cocoon, they curl up and turn into a gooey blob. Within five to seven days (depending on temperature) the luscans emerge from their cocoons in adult forms.

Their digestive systems don't work properly for about a day after emergence from the cocoon. During this time the adult luscan seeks live flora, rather than the decaying flora it normally eats. Whenever it scrapes up the cells of small flora, the cells are delivered to nodules in its "branches", not its gut. Later, the cells blocking passage to its gut commit apoptosis (programmed cell death), allowing it to eat normally. Most cells brought into the nodules are still alive upon arrival, but they die soon after that. At two days past the point of gut unblocking, ninety-eight percent of the foreign cells in the nodules are some species of basilliphyta, causing the nodules to have a uniform green color. The basilliphytan symbiotes provide the luscan host with excess sugars from photosynthesis. They also provide distasteful compounds, toxic in large amounts, that the luscan sequesters in its body. Their bitter taste makes them bolder than the larvae, allowing them to feed and photosynthesize for longer stretches of time.

While luscans normally reproduce parthenogentically, they have a one in two hundred chance of producing a male, which increases to one in one hundred twenty under certain stressful conditions. This allows luscans to periodically refresh their gene pool, especially in stressful times or places when they need it most. Male luscans in the larval stage are small and thin, and always stay near a female. When the female creates a cocoon, the male will create a cocoon nearby, emerging several hours prior to the female. When the female emerges as an adult, the male immediately mates with the female and leaves to find another to mate with.