Shroom

Shroom
First Appearance	7/47
Census	58 total / 12 extant
Progenitor	Mawshroom
Community and Production Information

Sappy Pinknose is an example of a shroom.

Shrooms are a group of decomposers and parasites that originated from the stickyballs. They have some outer physical resemblance to earth's mushrooms, though they are in fact quite different.

Anatomy

The exposed portions of most shrooms are built of two major parts, the stalk, and the cap, resulting in what is usually a fairly simple parasol style body form in appearance. They also grow their spores from below the cap, sometimes from tiny sprouts and other times directly from it. Like the Terran mushrooms they resemble, they have fairly set anatomy which can be modified but will usually still contain a distinct cap and stalk. However unlike the aforementioned mushroom the parasol is a permanent aspect of their body, essentially the core from which their root system sprouts from and congregates to, as opposed to the ephemeral fruiting bodies of their Terran comparisons. Their roots can come in many forms, though because of their detritus or host based diets root systems with very high surface areas tend to be the best option.

Behavior

The cropshroom,the first of the new line of detritivore shrooms that eventually survived the gamma ray disaster and ruled Sagan 4 after it.

The diggerundi, a species of tiny colonial creatures, grow the shroom in their underground burrows. They do so by watering them from the water-tables and feeding them with their own feces. They later feed on them.

Diet & Energy

The insaneshroom,the first carnivore shroom.

Originally most shrooms were parasites, growing directly from flora, mainly the tree plents, and feeding on their photosynthetic products. A specific line of shrooms evolved to become decomposers like their ancient ancestors. These started growing on the ground instead. After the gamma ray disaster, the only shrooms that survived were decomposers. These later diverged into many new forms.

One shroom was a parasite of fauna. This was the insanseshroom, which fed on small invertebrates.

Locomotion

Most shrooms are immoble, moving only if they infect moving organisms.

Reproduction

All shrooms use asexual reproduction method. They do so both by very fast asexual budding and very resistant spores like most descents of the stickyballs do.