Clamgrasses
| Clamgrasses | ||
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| (Ostreogramen ssp.) | ||
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| Information | ||
| Creator | Disgustedorite Other | |
| Week/Generation | 27/167 | |
| Habitat | Kosemen-Wallace Shelf, Fermi Shelf, Drake Shelf | |
| Size | 5-30 cm tall | |
| Primary Mobility | Sessile | |
| Support | Shell (Calcite) | |
| Diet | Photosynthesis | |
| Respiration | Passive | |
| Thermoregulation | Ectotherm | |
| Reproduction | Sexual (Spores), Asexual (Budding) | |
| Taxonomy | ||
| Domain Superkingdom Kingdom Phylum Class Order Family Genus Species | Eukaryota Viridisagania Luminophilia Erythrophyta Osteophytopsida Dactylopoales Ostreogramenaceae Ostreogramen Ostreogramen ssp. | |
| Ancestor: | Descendants: |
|---|---|
The clamgrasses split from their ancestor and moved back out to sea. Their sexual reproduction, inherited from their ancestor, allowed them to greatly diversify and outcompete some of their close relatives, namely the shellflora, the shellise, and the globby boneflora. They form clonal stands on the seafloor similar to their ancestor, with their greatest diversity being in upwelling zones, but small species can survive in any sheltered pocket of substrate—and even on the sides of rocks opposite to strong currents. They also grow in mangals. They cling to rocks and substrate using holdfasts, which bear scale-like structures to protect them from predators, just like the stem. Because of their use of red photosynthetic pigments, they are able to survive in dim lighting conditions, including parts of the seafloor much deeper than most marine flora can tolerate. The shell allows them to even survive into the shallowest parts of the twilight zone, as with so little light they can only grow very slowly and would be vulnerable to predation otherwise. They are perennial, relying on their general inedibility to survive even polar winters.
Clamgrasses are named for the structure of their reproductive shell. Instead of producing their clustered spore pods (or coenosori) fully exposed, they are formed inside the shell, which then opens up like a clam—albeit using water pressure as it inflates the cells of each coenosorus—to reveal them. This allows many more spores to be produced, as they are sheltered from most predators until they are ready to be released. If the reproductive shell developed before the stalk reached its full height, it will shed it; otherwise, it will shed only the coenosori and close the shell to make new ones. The inflation of the cells of the coenosori is accomplished using osmosis, as calcium is released inside of them, causing water to be drawn in.
Much like their ancestor, clamgrasses absorb calcium from seawater to build their segmented, bone-like shell. The shell is photosynthetic, but the lowermost segments may lose that ability, staying alive through cell-to-cell transport of nutrients as in other boneflora. When shell-crushing predators eat it, the uppermost surviving segment will heal and new segments will start to grow. Sometimes they might heal incorrectly, resulting in branching, but they don't otherwise branch naturally. New segments are bright red and rounded, and can be triggered to grow into a reproductive shell instead before they reach full size due to environmental stress or seasonal cues. Clamgrasses are fairly long-lived for a seaweed, with those residing in the depths surviving upwards of 15,000 years, though shallow water species rarely live for longer than 10–15 years.
Clamgrasses originated around Wallace and Kosemen, but their ability to survive in dim light allows them to grow in the upper depths of the twilight zone, which helped them jump to Fermi and Drake as well.