Damworms
A complex creature that creates its own self-tended ecosystems
Pictured Above: A Damworm in it's Finder stage looks for a new home in a corralum tube.
Damworms are a family of invertebrates that can grow large enough to form their own ecosystems. A cousin to Corralum, these creatures start life as a pupae spawned off their parent pool. This is called the 'Finder' phase.
These pupae, no larger than a finger, will float and crawl until they find a source of running water. Once they find a source, they will plant themselves, anchoring into the soil or rock and beginning the next stage of their life cycle. They will develop several rigid sets of butterfly wing-like apparatus that collect water into a growing pool on the creatures 'back'. This phase is called the "Seedling" phase, and typically lasts a year.
If the Damworm is successful enough in this phase, it will begin its third stage, where the wings harden faster and spread further. The Damworm can only enter this phase if it has created a large enough pool of water to form a miniature microenvironment. During this stage, called "Teething", the Damworm forms pseudopods and mouth-like structures that are used to control and protect its private ecosystem.
The Damworm continues to grow wider and wider, until entire ponds form on them at which point it can enter the final "Osmosis" phase, where the worm will begin to split into multiple 'districts' which causes the expulsion of more Finders.
Multiple Centuries
The Millenia Reservoir (1847 Years)
The Millenia Reservoir (1.5 Km)
An Ecological Powerhouse
There are few creatures as impactful to our environment as the humble Damworm.
It starts with a tiny little larva, but they can grow to the size of an entire lake!
Damworms are common finds on the surface and subsurface level of Corralum as well as caves and along rivers. Wherever water flows, you might find Damworms trying to make a home for themselves.
Finders and Seedlings are the most common to find around established pools, hundreds of Finders can be produced during an osmosis of an existing pool and all of them have a native desire to find new running water.
Damworms get their names from their later stages of life, where their growth becomes large enough that they form their own stable miniature ecosystems from the water and critters they have collected. Their primary nutrition comes from absorbing waste, feasting on plankton, and in some cases, symbiotic relationships with other predators.
Pictured Below: The largest Damworm family spans an entire lake which is 1.5 Kilometers wide. The lake has been used for recreation, shipping, and hosts a Luean city under its gentle waves.
I love these little guys. They sit back, relax, and let food come to them.
They're ponds that clean themselves!
The Damworm Lifecycle
The Finder phase is the first cycle of life for the Damworms, these little worms split off of an already established Damworm during Osmosis. These self-sufficient creatures will wriggle, crawl, and hop away from their parent pool to find new life.
Like caterpillars looking to bloom into butterflies, they will travel on until they find just the right spot. In this phase, their body consists of a fatty membrane propelled by scilia. These scilia are equipped with sensitive feelers that detect vibration and humidity, assisting in their search for a new home.
Pictured Left: A Finder-phase Damworm crawls amongst corralum and the skeleton of a Rutas in search for a water source.
When a Finder wriggles itself beneath a gentle flow of water, its legs will start to root into the ground or corralum, spreading like a spiderweb. The small plate on its backside will begin to expand, funneling upwards to form a dome for capturing water.
Mouths will develop at the crease of the dome, filtering small microbes and plankton from the water to feed and continue to grow. After a couple of months, the first layer of the shell will harden enough to allow other marine organisms to take root.
If you need to cull Damworms, the Seedling phase is the time to do it.
Once they get too big, removal can do more damage than just leaving it there and guiding it's growth.
Pictured Below: At the end of the teething phase, an osmosis will begin occuring. By now, a proper ecosystem has bloomed inside the damworms dome.
The Teething phase occurs when enough water is captured to form their isolated ecosystem. This is triggered when the Damworm is fed not only by plankton but also by the waste and nitrates of creatures that move into the Damworm's dome.
The dome fully fuses into its base surfaces, and the worm begins sprouting 'mouths' and pseudopods on the inside of the dome. Once the first mouths are established, the dome will grow at a fraction of it's original rate. The new appendages are used to clean the collected water, maintaining the ecosystem balance.
During this stage, the Damworm has grown large enough to start to crowd its own space. It enters a stage of separation. Parts of the pond that are not constantly submerged begin to harden around the edges. Nutrients from the whole of the worm are pumped to these sections, causing some of the established 'mouths' to recede.
When mouths recede, they leave cave structures that can be used to go below the dome. The hardening sections of dome begin to droop until they eventually fall off as a whole cluster of new Finders.
A Damworm can go through Osmosis an infinite number of times, and it is not uncommon to find massive miles wide clusters of damworms, called an 'Archipelago.'
The only way a Damworm's life cycle is ended is if something happens to destroy its captive food source or a massive impact shatters the formed dome.
Interactions with Sophont
Damworms are a popular critter for agricultural use, growing them is an artistic pastime that many who have the land take on as a way to have a clean and self-sustaining water collector.
Growing a Damworm on your own soil requires constant watering, preferably something attached to a pump. Make sure to trim off any excess dome that breaches water to prevent Osmosis!
Finders are used in terraformation especially in the ValuSelu Pact, their ability to form lakes and maintain themselves make them a perfect creature to send ahead to start collecting water.
Sophont are too large to be prey for the mouths of even the biggest Damworms. But if a swimmer does stray too close to one of the psuedopods, they can be grabbed and pulled under to drown as a defense of the ecosystem.
Some people have survived being dragged down by Psuedopods by finding old tunnels at the bottom of large domes and swimming out to safety on the other side.
While the Damworm doesn't see you as food, it does see you as potential fertilizer for its ecosystem.
This is great, but the link in your notification is busted. I had to search to find this! I love the thought you've put into this, not only how it's part of the natural ecosystem, but how your sophonts would cultivate them.
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No wonder why I've had no likes on it.... I'm glad you let me know! And I'm glad you like the content too!
Come check out some of my SummerCamp work if you need some inspiration ;)
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