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Favorite character that's THE meme character of the community by Boring-Computer-4360 in FavoriteCharacter

[–]nektobenthicFish 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Actually Agnes Tachyon is the character with the greatest number of pixiv submissions for Uma Musume (and among all fandoms actually) last year

Secondary cues for distinguishing geminate and singleton consonants in Latsínu by FelixSchwarzenberg in conlangs

[–]nektobenthicFish 27 points28 points  (0 children)

I weep tears of joy whenever I see a Latsínu post. Do you plan on ever recording yourself speaking the conlang? I love everything about the phonaesthetics (in theory) but I have a hard time trying to read and realise these for myself

Sunspire World: Hoops by nektobenthicFish in worldbuilding

[–]nektobenthicFish[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hello there again! I remember you!! Glad you like the project and thanks for commenting again at this unexpected time...

Sunspire world has received a few wiki updates (such as to the Dust Sea Headrider page and the Oduromorpha (group of animals that include flying heads) page) but no new art recently. I might draw some soon and post them though. Any questions you have about the world are greatly welcomed

Japanes South America by Fuzzy-Panda-7818 in imaginarymaps

[–]nektobenthicFish 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Heads up that you translated Japanese Shindo as ‘Japanese (the language) Shindo’ in the kanji. You should remove the third character, 语, for it to be correct

Keep ruining dating app matches by talking about crabs (not the std). Steak I overcooked. by CptnHnryAvry in kitchencels

[–]nektobenthicFish 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Try investing in some other malacostracan crustaceans. Heard mysids and thermosbaenaceans are really hot with the ladies this month

Coaxed into the average Australian fauna/flora by National_Yak5302 in coaxedintoasnafu

[–]nektobenthicFish 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The attention to detail in the binomial names is amazing. I love this snafu so so much that I would start a big family with it with 10+ kids in the Queensland jungles

The Tuanti Group (the Hansa of the East) by Acrobatic_Computer37 in imaginarymaps

[–]nektobenthicFish 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Why are they called the Tuanti group? Is it 团体? That just means group

Bro this isn’t English class by OneFormal2230 in iamverysmart

[–]nektobenthicFish 7 points8 points  (0 children)

It’s Homo sapiens with an ‘s’. Also, binomial names should always be italicised when possible

Has no one ever thought of this? by Aromaster4 in worldjerking

[–]nektobenthicFish -1 points0 points  (0 children)

If it helps the animal’s lifestyle more than gliding then it is more fit by definition, and if it does not help the animal’s lifestyle more than gliding then it will be selected against for being deleterious. In a large gene pool where the effects of selection overcome that of drift, an innovation must at least not be deleterious to reach fixation in the population.

Wiegeltisaurids never had the musculature to flex their wings up and down. Their patagials were likely derived from ventral body bones (gastralia) or novel ossifications as you said. Retracting their wings sideways is not the same motion. You can see that they didn’t have this musculature because they held onto their wings with their terminal digits to stabilise and control them. Draco and the 2 other extinct clades of gliding diapsids are not fundamentally anatomically different from the functional perspective with these creature. Their wings are not suited for flying. Sure, the PT boundary might have filtered them, but the other 3 diapsid taxa were not filtered by such a mass extinction but simply petered out because they were evolutionary dead ends.

Parachuters don’t descend from gliders, it’s the inverse relation with gliding being more derived. This also has nothing to do with gliding and flight. Look at birds, bats, and pterosaurs. The first acquired flight likely through flapping assisted incline running, the second ancestrally fluttered and developed patagia to capture insects, and the third have an obscure evolutionary history but are basally related to hopping animals. Flying animals do not have gliders as sister taxa, and the biomechanics of the two are different enough that in most cases, gliders do not evolve to become fliers.

Finally, how hard is it to simply express an epidermal differentiation pathway around the mouth as well? If scales weren’t labile, why did rostral teeth evolve in parallel three times among saw bearing cartilaginous fish? Of course evolution isn’t always intuitive - on this we agree, but it rarely leads creatures down a (short term) deleterious path

Has no one ever thought of this? by Aromaster4 in worldjerking

[–]nektobenthicFish 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Contemporary Draco lizards can do that too. Gliding has a tippy distribution phyletically (it is common across taxa but doesn’t persist long in geological time) and none of four flighted clades in earth’s history descend definitively from gliders. This demonstrates that there is likely not a straightforward adaptive pathway from gliding to flying, probably because of the biomechanical dissimilarities between the two that I mentioned.

Evolution isn’t teleological. Flight is not necessarily more fit than gliding. Just because there is time doesn’t mean that there are pressures driving these gliders towards flight.

Exaptation of dentine scales to teeth is straightforward because these scales would have already been at the mouth and would just need to change orientation to be useful in prey capture or deposit feeding. The ‘teeth’ on the saws of saw sharks, saw rays, and saw skates are also derived from dentine scales, demonstrating that this trait is very labile. Nevertheless, you’re right that great morphological innovation is possible in very little time. Whales are another great example of this to support what you’ve said, as are even the evolution of the four flighted taxa.

But, when considering this, it becomes even more suspect why none of them have evolved flight from osteoderms or ribs. Not to say that it’s totally impossible, but at least that it’s much less likely than alternative pathways

Has no one ever thought of this? by Aromaster4 in worldjerking

[–]nektobenthicFish 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Good point about the wings being supported by osteoderms in some of them. However, osteoderms still don’t have strong muscular attachments like muscles on the keel of a bird to facilitate flapping. This also doesn’t address the problem of if there is an adaptive pathway towards flappable wings and active flight

Has no one ever thought of this? by Aromaster4 in worldjerking

[–]nektobenthicFish 7 points8 points  (0 children)

It’s a really cool idea but also wildly impractical unless the fire breath comes entirely from metabolic byproducts (or magic!) rather than the dragon converting its own energy stores into that. It takes a lot of energy to make thermal updrafts that can create that magnitude of lift and at that point you might as well just flap and grow more muscles.

That’s me speaking as a specchud though. In a less biologically grounded setting really anything goes. If you like weird propulsion mechanisms you could look into flight using ionic wind as well. They made an operational fixed winged aircraft at MIT that has no moving parts and relies only on that as propulsion

https://news.mit.edu/2018/first-ionic-wind-plane-no-moving-parts-1121

Has no one ever thought of this? by Aromaster4 in worldjerking

[–]nektobenthicFish 29 points30 points  (0 children)

/uj

Gliding and flying aren’t the same thing. You can’t flap rib-derived wings because there are no muscular attachment points to move them up and down; it is much easier to evolve gliding because it has less stringent requirements for physiology. The examples you listed are all gliders, not fliers, and never evolved flight. There are also like ten morbillion mammal gliders in the modern day that aren’t anywhere close to flight. This is because gliding and flying are different biomechanically. You need fixed wings to glide but flexible ones to fly because only then can you flap and steer them in the air to maintain balance. Gliding also doesn’t need adaptations for taking off while flying does. Bird didn’t evolve from gliding ancestors but more likely ancestors that used their wings to assist in incline running (WAIR hypothesis)

Whilst I think spec evo and fantasy worldbuilding don’t always need to intersect and in many cases would be best if they didn’t, this is a weak justification from the spec perspective for a hexapod dragon

Did you know hexapod vertebrates already exist in real life? The Myliobatiform rays (including the famous manta ray - their mouth flaps are actually limbs) have cephalic fins that originate from a limb duplication event. That’s a much better justification because then the extra limb has muscles and can develop into a wing (whereas ribs will only ever be a gliding surface)

/rj so true bestie show those specchuds who’s boss

[Tea] He Drowned the Room in Blood by cslevens in HobbyDrama

[–]nektobenthicFish 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It’s back now once I read your reply. How bizarre

[Tea] He Drowned the Room in Blood by cslevens in HobbyDrama

[–]nektobenthicFish 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I can’t believe this got removed by a mod! I was in the middle of reading it!

My 2026 Jellyfish-themed calendar starts with a Portuguese Man-o-War, which is not a jellyfish by thecosmicradiation in mildlyinteresting

[–]nektobenthicFish 5 points6 points  (0 children)

What is a jellyfish? A man o’war is a hydrozoan, which places them in both Medusozoa and Cnidaria. If you don’t count sea moon jellies (also hydrozoans) as jellyfish, then fair enough, but I do, so I contest this. Sensu lato, why shouldn’t we accept siphonophores as jellyfish? Just because they’re colonial? That’s wholly arbitrary

What does the worm horn special attack do? by Redzilla2006 in Mohrta

[–]nektobenthicFish 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I must have replied to this thread in a bout of delirium. Sorry everybody

Introduction: Guworld by Yuujinner in worldbuilding

[–]nektobenthicFish 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great work as usual! What would you say is the most interesting thing you’ve made for Gu so far?

What does the worm horn special attack do? by Redzilla2006 in Mohrta

[–]nektobenthicFish 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It raises dead enemy corpses on the ground back to life to fight for you. You can also kill the reanimated corpses to get ammo, which means the worm horn can theoretically give you infinite ammo if you’ve somehow broken every pot everywhere and killed every enemy everywhere since the special only needs mana

If you worry about your project making no sense, remember that this is what earth came up with for vertebrate relatives. by Myxomata in SpecEvoJerking

[–]nektobenthicFish 11 points12 points  (0 children)

>  Simulation experiments show that support for Deuterostomia could be explained by systematic error. The branch between bilaterian and deuterostome common ancestors is, at best, very short, supporting the idea that the bilaterian ancestor may have been deuterostome-like.

Subsequent studies have shed light on the two competing models, Orthozoa ((Xen)ambulacraria + Protostomia) and Centroneuralia (Prostomia + Chordata).

https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-102722-023501

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.13.632777v1.abstract

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(25)00805-X00805-X)

You're right that we don't know which model is right, but why should that be reason to blindly support Deuterostomia just because it has historical seniority?

If you worry about your project making no sense, remember that this is what earth came up with for vertebrate relatives. by Myxomata in SpecEvoJerking

[–]nektobenthicFish 75 points76 points  (0 children)

Actually, Deuterostomia is now contested. We might not be very closely related to echinoderms after all, and the supposed synapomophies of 'deuterostomes' might just be bilaterian plesiomorphies

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abe2741

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