Mad cat scientist

niche partioning is a concept from ecology wherein groups within a species expand into different ecological niches so they're not competing with one another, right? so for example, sexual niche partitioning happens when sexual dimorphism means that one sex eats different things / occupies different spaces / etc. as another within the same species. you have one species that occupies multiple niches within the ecosystem.

ontogenetic niche partitioning is when this happens as a result of developmental changes. paternal care tends to obliterate this partitioning--hard to have your juveniles eating something different from your adults if the adults are feeding them!--so we just don't see it very often in mammals or birds, but it's quite common in other species, especially invertebrates. for example, a caterpillar and a butterfly are examples of classic niche partitioning, even though every butterfly will occupy both niches over the course of its life. you don't have to have a big fancy chrysalis transformation to engage in ontogenetic niche partitioning, but those transformations are a pretty big sign that it's happening in a given species.

anyway, it's most common in vertebrates among fish, lizards and snakes these days, especially monitor lizards, where juveniles will occupy a different (often arboreal or otherwise sheltered) niche from adults and hunt different prey until they get big enough that the juvenile niche. there are some good reasons to think that some dinosaurs might have engaged in ontogenetic niche partitioning, especially the bigger species, too. we think sea turtles might do it, although that's hard to say because we don't know very much about sea turtle development once the hatchlings go back to the sea.

the neat thing about ontogenetic niche partitioning is that it allows a given ecology to host a much larger population size for a given species than would otherwise be the case, because the total space occupied by that species is spread across a lot wider niche space. this is especially relevant for, say, a large carnivore that eats livestock.

basically, what if dragons are just the very oldest, reproductively mature members of their species, and the common wall lizard or whatever is just a juvenile that might or might not survive long enough to reproduce? imagine if dragon eggs are very small with big clutches of little insectivorous hatchlings that are eaten by anything that comes by, any of which might have the potential to become a great fire-breathing monster if it lives long enough.

imagine that dragon society. do people know that the hatchlings and the dragons are the same species? (they might not: there are real examples of people mistaking ontogenetically niche separated groups for independent species in their own right.) if dragons are sapient but the sapience takes time to develop, what does that say about the nature of sapience itself? how does a society work and transfer wealth if you remove parental care?

A lot of traditional fantasy fans don't like it because it's, well, missing most of the stuff that we love about traditional fantasy. There is often very little character development and very little philosophical musing. There is often no nuance or complexity.

But I've seen folks say some very mean things about the subgenre and the people who like it. ... And I don't think they get the fundamental draw of LitRPG. I'm mostly coming at this as an outsider, so I could be very wrong about this; I've seen a lot of people talk about the LitRPG/progression fantasy settings they're building on r/worldbuilding and r/fantasy, and I've read a wee bit of it but not much. I'd love to see someone who reads a lot in the genre weigh in.

But it seems like the main draw of this genre, the main daydream powering the fantasy, isn't actually about the leveling up or even about the clever tricks that the heroes use when they're under-leveled. It's that in a LitRPG world, if what you can do is reduced to a number, that number means something.

Like, the whole 'isekai with power scaling based on video game mechanics' genre came from Japan and Korea, right? And it's aimed at teenagers, right? ....Think about it for a sec. Across the world, and especially in East Asia, a lot of teenagers' lives revolve around one number: their school grades (and/or test scores). If your grades suck, you are treated as subhuman until you get your shit together. If your grades are good, you are under an incredible amount of pressure to keep it that way. Your grades/test scores are A Number That Defines Your Fate.

And like, grades are a terrible measure of human worth for a whole bunch of reasons. But one of the biggest ones is that, as a high schooler, they're not actually under your control. There are absolutely things you can do to raise your grades if you're struggling, but a lot of your life circumstances, as a teenager, are defined by someone else. If your parents are fighting and keeping you up til 3 AM? Or if you get a teacher that hates you and grades you accordingly? Your grades are going to suffer, through no fault of your own, and there isn't much to be done about it. Everyone knows that The Number That Defines Your Fate is garbage, and yet you have to obsess over it, or you're going to suffer for the rest of your life.

The fantasy of LitRPG is that the Number that Defines Your Fate is an objective fact, that hard work and persistence can actually change that number for the better, and that having a higher Number makes you cool rather than 'tired, stressed out, and unable to have any time to be yourself'. It isn't focused on relationships because most of its target audience doesn't have time for relationships, romantic or otherwise. There isn't room for philosophy or nuance, because most of the kids reading this stuff are tired to death and want popcorn fiction they can read between juggling 16 different assignments.

mermaid megafauna

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