Golden Villigrass

Golden Villigrass
(Robigoflora aurea)
Information
Creator	Bufforpington Other
Week/Generation	27/167
Habitat	Lamarck Water Table
Size	24 cm Tall
Primary Mobility	Unknown
Support	Unknown
Diet	Lithotroph (Iron, Basalt), Herbivore (Yellow Cushion), Consumer, Filter-Feeder, Detritivore
Respiration	Passive Diffusion
Thermoregulation	Ectotherm
Reproduction	Asexual (Runners), Sexual (Conjugation)
Taxonomy
Domain Kingdom Genus Species	Eukaryota Endoturbaria Robigoflora Robigoflora aurea

Ancestor:	Descendants:
Hanging Villigrass

Taking residence in the volcanic regions of Lamarck Water Table, the golden villigrass split from its ancestor after some hanging villigrass took up residence near the vents. Their long villi allowed them to radiate more heat, allowing them a foothold in the hot waters in their new home. They congregate on any hard surface they can dig their rhizoids into. This most commonly includes the cave ceiling and fresh pillow lava deposits. They form fields of golden villi in both areas by consuming the other early successional species in the region. They in turn are kept in check by the dynamic volcanic environment, which occasionally spews lava that crushes and burns away these fields. This is most common on pillow lava deposits. The ceiling community, however, is much more stable. However, they fare poorly in areas directly above hydrothermal vents, as they are often blasted and killed by very hot water.

The golden villigrass' namesake is their golden color. This does not come from the villigrass itself, but instead comes from the sulfamoeba-derived chemeba species that grow in the pits that dot the surface of the golden villigrass. The pits are also more numerous, allowing for a greater population of symbionts. These chemeba will process iron-sulfur compounds, consuming the sulfur and transferring the iron to villigrass for respiration. They will also simply consume nonferrous sulfur compounds to no benefit to the villigrass. The golden villigrass will also passively take up Fe2+ emitted from nearby vents for its own metabolism. Golden Villigrass will also have their pits inhabited by electini and other chemebas that are adapted to eating non-sulfuric iron compounds produced by the vents. The former however, do not benefit the golden villigrass and are only commensalists. These other species often blunt the golden color of the golden villigrass, occasionally resulting in silver morphs. They, however, do not fare nearly as well as the golden morph due to their lower iron uptake, so they are far rarer. The rhizoidal pits are occupied by the same lithotrophic chemebas as their ancestor, and the number of pits there has remained the same.

Golden villigrass are larger than their ancestor to take up more nutrients. They also are faster growing and shorter lived to compensate for the more chaotic environment. Golden villigrasses will persist for up to three months. This results in slowly shifting fields that move in response to heat in the volcanic caverns, moving away from particularly hot or cold regions into a warm middle point for optimal nutrient uptake, all while slowly devouring any microbial mat or yellow cushion in their paths. When two colonies meet, they will reproduce en masse via conjugation. Spores will be released in massive numbers to offset the losses caused by spores being passed through extremely hot currents created by black smokers. Those same currents, however, can transport the spores over very long distances to new regions to the cavern. Despite the increasingly fragmented nature of Lamarck Water Table's volcanic regions, the golden villigrass has little trouble propagating throughout all of them, forming a stable metapopulations that regularly rescue each other from extinction by long range spore dispersal. These spores are not nearly as picky as their ancestor, setting root in any place with a suitably hard surface and ready access to volcanic emissions.