Ruby Cruster: Difference between revisions

As the stem/root structure are not consumed, it is not uncommon for a single cruster to 'fruit' many times with edible spore bodies. The problem comes when it finally dies, as the calcite shell will remain until it is crushed by passing fauna to a fine enough degree to be consumed by microbes. As the secondary method of reproduction involves new crusters sprouting from an extended root network, this can lead ultimately to rings of living crusters around a circle of dead shells, waiting for large polar fauna to crush them and return the calcium to the soil.

 

 

Duplications are one of the more common genetic mutations, along with deletions and substitutions. Normally this happens on the level of single base pairs in the DNA code, but sometimes agents such as transposons can duplicate entire sequences at once. This may have no effect, may destroy the function of the gene being coded for, may result in overproduction of a gene product, or in the case of certain signalling chemicals may cause duplication of an entire body segment (additional legs, for example). The latter case is very rare indeed, as not only do genes code for chemistry rather than design, but if they aren't killed by their parent at birth such additional body parts are almost always a terrible hardship and will probably select against their line.