#disk ant

Sorry about the delay I had to reread a parts of fragment to get a better idea of the ecosystem within.

Okay so when talking about ecosystems and trophic levels the first thing to establish is the energy source for said ecosystem. In this case its easy, the energy source for Hender’s Island is the same as 99% of the rest of the planet, the sun. From there we then have to establish two things, primary producers and micro-fauna. Hender’s Island actually does have pretty well established flora and florafauna those being the “clover/lichen” and the disk ant trees. Both are eaten by most of the other lifeforms on Hender’s Island and in turn also act as the primary decomposer in the case of the clover. As shown by Hender’s house their are other, smaller and more docile species of florafauna and flora but these seem to be partially domesticated and as such shouldn’t be counted with the rest of the ecosystem. Of course the house tree’s themselves are fully domesticated and exist outside the greater ecosystem so again they shouldn’t be counted. Hender’s Island does also have a massive variety of microorganisms such as the armored worms found in the soil and the planktonic larva of the rest of the islands inhabitants. Now I say planktonic that's me coming up with the closest analog to what's going on in Hender’s Island. Honestly fragment as a book is unrealistic when it comes the biomechanics of many of its organisms but its ecosystem isn’t the most far fetched thing in the world, its just overly exaggerated compared to the actual ecosystem its based on. 

Hender’s Island is a marine ecosystem moved to dry land, complete with plankton, predators eating predators, interspecies cannibalism, extremely durable wildlife, and florafauna. Most species on Hender’s Island have extremely fast reflex's, are basically made of muscle and nerve endings, and move in a 3d environment more so like aquatic life than traditional terrestrial life. Not only that Hender’s Island isn’t just a marine habitat placed on land, I would go as far to say that it is a planktonic marine habitat scaled up. Zooplankton is fascinating in that it is chock full of all sorts of amazing and horrifying lifeforms which do frequently hunt and eat each other. Even species traditionally classified as phytoplankton have evolved to hunt and consume one another and even zooplankton. Disk ants for example are basically just a crab trying to become coral. They start out as moving predators that when conditions are right root themselves down, metamorphosis into a “tree” state and then live out the rest of their days as photosynthetic predators, feeding on smaller organisms that pass by and gaining nutrients from sunlight, probable through symbiotic cyanobacteria or algae, or maybe some microscopic clover relative. Honestly look up a detailed marine food web, even the simple ones are a nightmare to follow and look more like a modern art piece than anything else.

With all of this now being established then the biggest question I’m sure that anon originally asked and wanted the answer to is energy. Energy transfer between trophic levels is not very efficient. Only about 10% of the net productivity of one level ends up as net productivity at the next level. Most of the energy between trophic levels is lost through heat and other bodily processes. So in a hyper aggressive ecosystem where everything is eating everything, how can there be enough energy and nutrients to go around. Well on Hender’s Island there are three strategies for keeping up with this murder machine of an ecosystem. The first strategy is the outsider strategy. These or organisms who bypass the nonsense of the island altogether by getting their energy from other sources. These would be the nursery bulbs, which feed on adult seabirds and their guano, and in turn nurse juvenile seabirds with a milk-like substance. Seabird guano is one of the richest fertilizers on the planet so even if they didn’t eat the adult birds the nursery bulbs would still be pretty comfortable. The next category is the partial-outsider. These are the Hendropods who cultivate their own food away from the jungle but also travel their occasionally to hunt for food and supplies. They are most removed from the ecosystem and like humans can cycle energy at their own pace. 

Then there are the insiders, the species that actually live inside the biological blender. The book describes these organisms as being biologically immortals, meaning that they will continuously grow, heal, and exist as long as something doesn’t kill them. This is important to note when talking about trophic levels because the fact of the matter is most species are constantly on the move because if they stopped they would starve. This is a shrinking pond of an ecosystem that at one point was probably not nearly as hostile as it is today. Once more and more of the island began to fall into the sea, competition increased, only the fastest, most durable, and adaptable organisms could survive. These organisms are carnivores, they are ultravores meaning they will consume ANY organic matter they find because if they didn’t they would starve and die. The disk ants are the best at this since they found a loophole with their sessile stage but even then they still need nutrients to grow and maintain their bodies which are constantly being eaten away at by their neighbors. The most abundant carbohydrate in this environment is chitin which is not easy to digest. So, all organisms already need to have efficient digestive systems to digest this material and they use that same system for digesting everything else. The two major keystone species of this environment are the hender’s rats and disk ants. The disk ants are food for many other carnivores and they in turn kill inured or weak creatures to cycle their energy. The rats on the other hand act as midlevel predators that are eaten by larger beasts and in turn hunt in packs to bring down bigger prey themselves. Both the disk ant and the rats provide the backbone of this ecosystem though, trees and spigers. The trees provide shelter, produces “fruits”, and help keep many of the smaller organisms populations in check. The spigers are mountains of meat, creature specialized to hunt and kill each other and much like a whalefall, a spiger carcasses is as bounty of food. 

Honestly its only because of these two species that this ecosystem can even work in the first place, energy gathers in the spigers and trees and once they are killed it is quickly redistributed amongst the smaller inhabitants. I could go on about Hender’s Island for hours but the bottom line is this, the organisms here have extremely efficient everything systems and because of that efficient they all need lots of food. Its basically an island of hummingbirds and shrews, hypervores that must all eat each other because if they didn’t they’d starve. This is the effect of the shrinking pond and evolutionarily would be on a fast tract to extinction anyways since at some point the space would dwindle enough for there to not be enough room for large ant forests and spigers to exist, preventing larger organisms from getting enough nutrients to survive. The only thing that would remain would be the nursery cradles, the clover, and microorganisms which would eventually slow down in aggressiveness due to the lack of competition. Honestly energy wise its at a constant deficit but makes up for that fact by recycling nutrients at an astronomical rate, making up for all the energy lost from heat and bodily processes. Nothing lives long enough for it to be a huge issue since anything that does starve is just recycles back into the system again.