A Troubling Menagerie

So lately I've been working on a little speculative ecosystem project, picking back up the work I did about four years ago. A lot of those creatures were designed for prompts for an art challenge that I just happened decided to use in that way, but I was thinking how much I'd like to have an actual list of prompts geared towards the goal I set for myself. Which lead me to making up this, a little list of prompts based on very broad ecological concepts so as to be as applicable as possible to the widest possible range of different projects.

Producer - give me an autotroph ie. an animal that feeds directly on an energy source, like light, radiation, or chemicals

Primary Consumer - predator of the autotroph you just made (cows are predators of grass!)

Secondary Consumer - now what’s something that eats that animal.

Tertiary Consumer - or an “Apex predator”, an organism with no natural predators of its own

Decomposer - something that consumes the remains of any of the previous organisms.

Parasite of any of the above organisms

Hyperparasite ie. something that parasitizes that parasite

Coprophage - something that eats dung

Ecosystem engineer - an organism that creates habitats for other organisms

An organism with a hard shell, carapace, etc.

Durophagic predator of previous organism

An organism which occupies different trophic levels in its adult and immature forms

A sessile organism

An organism that with a symbiotic relationship with any of the previous organisms

An autotroph small enough to fit on your fingertip

An autotroph small enough to fit in your hand

An autotroph taller than a house.

Autotroph with specialized defenses

Autotroph that depends on a symbiotic relationship

The organism the previous organism depends on

A fossorial organism

An aquatic organism

A cursorial predator

An ambush predator

An organism that utilizes mimicry

An organism not visible to the naked eye

An R selected species - an organism which has many offspring, each with a low chance of survival

A K selected species - an organism which has few offspring, each with a high chance of survival

A keystone species - an organism who’s presence defines the ecosystem it is a part of, without it this ecosystem would not exist in the same state

An extremely specialized organism

An adaptable generalist

This is formatted as a month-long challenge, but I don't think anyone needs to approach it that way if they want to do it.

I am relearning a bunch of things on this one, including (but not limited to):

Perspective

Official pokemon style/designs

How to color like Ken Sugimori