Paddletail
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As the shrootsitter shoveltail capitalized on their relationship with the fragorishroot, they proved to be quite competitive and forced most of the shoveltails they had evolved from to double down into the role of subterranean feeders of tree roots, giving rise to the rootnibbler shoveltail. Not all populations went down this path, however, as several groups of shoveltail would cling on around the various watersheds of central Wallace. While most of them descend from the same radiation that gave rise to both the shrootsitter shoveltail and rootnibbler shoveltail, the ones dwelling within the Ichthy watershed are of a much more ancient stock. Having diverged from the other groups of shoveltail at around the start of the Masonian period, this ancestral group had become mostly isolated with only limited breeding with the other groups of shoveltails. By this particular time point, they had become a unique taxon known as the paddletail, which ended up replacing their ancestor as they faced competition with the shrootsitter shoveltail for more terrestrial roles.
The paddletail significantly differs from its ancestor and relatives in behavior and subtly in anatomy, since it has a significantly different lifestyle. In some ways, this species of dweller could be compared to the long extinct river shoveltail in a few ways, but even then they differ in various other ways. For example, the river shoveltail primarily uses their forelimbs as flippers and their tail alone as a fluke, while the paddletails simply uses their forelimbs to steer in water while beating their lower spine including the tail up and down in conjunction with beating their longer hindlimbs. The toes on the hindlimbs possess small lobes on them in a similar fashion to the Terran loons so that swimming underwater is a bit easier.
The paddletail is notable for being much more gracile than their ancestor and relatives, since the species does not spend as much time digging and so do not need as powerful muscles. Much like the river shoveltail, paddle tails have had their nostrils and eyes moved higher up on their heads. The ancestral ability to seal their nostrils comes quite in handy, as it prevents water from flooding their lungs. While the eyes can also be sealed shut, which typically happens when the paddletail is digging in the ground, the paddletail does not seal them when underwater. This is because they developed a prominent membrane that covers their eyes and thus shields them from the water. Their eyes also possess large round lenses and a large iris that fully opens underwater, much like Terran seals. On land the iris closes the pupil to a smaller size that in turn lets the dweller see clearly through the round lens. These adaptations in turn allow the paddletail to clearly see both in the water and on land.
The paddletail stands out from both the rootnibbler and shrootsitter shoveltails as well in terms of diet, as while the species is exclusively herbivorous it does not specialize in eating roots. Indeed, much of the dweller's diet comes from aquatic foliage such as twinkiiros, yanisflora, and aquatic pioneeroots. Despite this, a good portion of the paddletail's diet does come from terrestrial foliage, but paddletails will always stick close to bodies of water so that they can quickly retreat to safety when detecting a predator. Since they diverged from the ancestral rootnibbler and shrootsitter shoveltails long before they evolved a tympanic membrane, the paddletail is still deaf and as such relies on sight and smell to sense danger and to navigate their environment, at least on land. In the water, a paddletail can better sense vibrations, which is why the species will slap their tails on the surface of the water if they sense a threat, as then everyone in the group will know about it. While paddletails mostly rely on their sharp senses and good swimming skills to avoid threats, they do show their ancestry in the fact that they still dig out burrows. These burrows aren't anything special, being merely simple holes that go into the river banks that the paddletails will rest in. This is also the place where paddletails will rear their young, since they will be sheltered from most predators.
Paddletails mate around mid winter so that by the time they lay their eggs, conditions will be improving for them. These dwellers stand out from their relatives in forming harems, with groups consisting of females and their young being guarded by between one to three mature males. The males will jealously guard their harems from other males, who typically dwell in bachelor groups for mutual protection against predators. Male paddletails will try to obtain a harem either by trying to take an already established harem through directly challenging the current male paddletails, or by trying to lure a female into joining him and forming their own harem. All of this revolves around display, since paddletails rarely ever resort to actually intraspecific violence as it would make them more vulnerable to predators. This in turn resulted in the paddletail having extremely prevalent sexual dimorphism, with males being larger overall, possessing more prominent crests, and having more vibrant colors. The females in the group will lay their three to eight eggs into a sort of communal burrow, so that all the females can take turns guarding their eggs and foraging for food for a month until their eggs begin to hatch. After the eggs hatch, the females will continue to take turns guarding the chicks and gathering food for both themselves and their chicks, though female paddletails will only feed their own chicks which they can identify through smell.
Once the chicks are old enough to start feeding themselves, they will leave the communal burrow and join the rest of the group. It's at this point that the male will take the role of protecting the youngsters, with the chicks sticking close to him for the first few months outside of the burrow. As they grow in size, the paddletail chicks will move further and further away from the male and become more independent. After a year, the chicks will have two different things happen to them depending on their sex. Males get kicked out by the dominant males at this point and have to fend for themselves, while females will stay in the group but they become sexually mature. This in turn makes them more receptive to bachelor males luring them away to start a harem of their own, but they may also stay in their parent group their whole lives since the dominant males do get displaced by other males fairly often.
While the paddletail will always aggressively defend their young from predatory squatshroots, their relationships between fragorishroots is a bit more complex in the areas their ranges overlap. Paddletails look different enough from most shoveltails that fragorishroots may see them as something else and as such can be also a potential threat to their young, but they also still look similar enough that the dwellers and shroots can occasionally form relationships. These are often only fairly simple interactions, like the two species working together to drive off a common threat or sharing certain resources. With that said, paddletails and fragorishroots only occasionally form relationships, and neither rear each other's young.
