We start our trip through the islands in the water that divides them. In the shallow saltwater 'rivers' that snake between isles, spindly sharkitties make their home. They are a species of whiskerwhale which is primarily found here, though also range south to the similar saltswamp region of Serinaustra - the trilliontree's southern counterpart.  They are among the most distinctive sharkitty whiskerwhales and resemble others hardly at all, being highly elongated, marked with contrasting patterns, and having only very small dorsal fins. Yet these traits are all derived, from a more compact ancestor, and these animals are closer related to species such as the darkshark and black snipper than to other whiskerwhales with a more superficial similar form. Adapted to swim through very shallow water and navigate obstacles such as tree roots and thick vegetation, these whiskerwhales spend most of their time cruising, eel-like, just above the bottom sediment. They have evolved the most spectacular whiskers of their wider lineage, a complicated organ now present in two pairs on the snout. The whisker hairs now grow from a long, mobile appendage, a rod of cartilage that is tipped with many such hairs like a brush. Connected to many nerves, the rods can be flicked ahead of the animal as it swims, feeling into the mud and into small hiding places where fish may be hiding, giving this whiskerwhale an edge in finding prey even in waters rich in organic material and with very low visibility, as are common in between forested islands. The hunter has an uncommonly flexible neck for a whiskerwhale, and targets prey by surprise by seeming to pass by it, only to lunge with great speed backwards with a swing of its neck to the side, catching its target unaware.

The spindly sharkitty hunts around the clock, resting at irregular intervals. Its eyesight is good, but it does not need it to feed, as even in total darkness it can locate prey by touch with its whiskers and hone in one its location by feeling slight changes in pressure in the water around its face. It often has more success fishing by night, as its prey holes up to hide when the sun goes down. It sometimes varies its hunting techniques to catch a wider range of food. It may ambush land animals, sitting in murky water scarcely deeper than its body height, obscured from sight. Though it is a large animal and can reach a length of up to 18 feet, its narrow body allows it to lurch itself out of water onto the shore and snatch unwary wading birds or small tribbetheres this way with a furious paddling of its tail; then, prey in its jaws, it will roll back into the water and dart away with its prize. Though it is a solitary animal, the female of this species cares for her young as do other sharkitties, and has the fewest per brood of any whiskerwhale - almost always twins. The young stay close to their mother for over a year, and many of the finer tricks of hunting are learned rather than innate. The spindly sharkitty also has enemies of its own here, however.

The ardeadile is the second largest skungaru, reaching up to 16 feet in height. Endemic to the trilliontrees, these skuorcs are the closest relative of the largest one, the scalpture of more northern regions. They are more specialized than their relative toward carnivory and eat little in the way of plants, with most of the diet now coming from fish or fish-like birds (about 75%) and the rest from land-dwelling vertebrate animals. Their jaws are powerful and triangular, adapted to deliver crushing forces far greater than other skungarus, but prey is only killed with the jaws; it is captured with the rake-like arm claws which are shared with its related species. The ardeadile is a wading predator, standing most often knee deep in the many salt- or brackish water channels between near-situated islands in the outer regions of the archipelago and ambushing passing fish, snarks, and birds such as squelicans, burdles, and whiskerwhales, that are forced to navigate through the narrow waterways while traveling from one lagoon to another. With a sudden lunge, the ardeadile can toss its prey straight out of the water and onto the beach; once upon dry land, it is helpless against its jaws. The spindly sharkitty is not an uncommon meal.

Ardeadiles have a more horizontal posture than scalptures, and balance themselves while lunging at prey with a fatty hump on their lower backs. Males, but not females, have a prominent red keratin knob on their bills while both sexes are otherwise similarly marked with green, black and yellow striping which hides them well when viewed from underwater against a forest background. Ardeadiles are less solitary than scalptures and may form small, loose associations around waterways where they can trap prey between each other and block its escape; there is no sharing of a single kill, however, and any one which snatches a target successfully promptly runs up the beach to eat it in seclusion. Only females with young, usually twins, share meals. The young stay near their mother for a year, though can begin independently foraging as young as a month of age, and are around one-third grown when they become independent, just before she gives birth again. Unlike scalptures, mothers do not aggressively chase off grown young and may still tolerate them nearby into adulthood if food is not scarce; relatives like this are most likely to hunt cooperatively. Though males play little role in childcare normally, they are benign to infants, as the female does not come into estrus immediately if her young are lost and so no impetus exists to encourage the evolution of infanticide. The tolerance of males toward juveniles sometimes extends toward a mentor-like role toward recently weaned adolescents which are leaving their mothers for the first time as their mothers give birth to new litters and begin to ignore them. By spending time away from their parent and with another tolerant, experienced adult, the young ardeadiles can slowly get used to being on their own while also benefiting from the protection of the larger adults. Though fully grown ardeadiles have no enemies, juveniles even past a year of age are potentially vulnerable to ambush by ravenators, and young chicks to a wider range of predators including barongulls and the elusive stranglepard. Adult ardeadiles are belligerent toward most other animals and may go out of their way to kill carnivores before they get a chance to hunt any of their kind, even if they have no young of their own; the barongull is especially hated and will be killed and eaten if ever possible. Aredeadiles, like ravenators, can swim from island to island, though their range is more limited and the distance they will cross is less. Occasionally they will venture inland, usually drawn by the scent of carrion, which they can often monopolize even against the fierce ravenator by merit of their larger size.

~~~

Sometimes a different niche isn't so much about eating different things, but doing so at a different scale. The fishook, too, hunts fish from the shoreline, striking by ambush. But at only a few ounces in weight, it does not compete with the ardeadile, which unlikely takes any notice of it at all. It is an arboreal siphontooth which hunts aquatic prey in the mangrove forests of the trilliontrees, where low-growing dancing trees grow in tangled colonies along the shores of countless narrow waterways. This is a habitat in which larger animals are all but excluded; to pass through gnarled branches and interwoven vines means to be little and nimble. The mangrove thickets biome of the trilliontrees is a world, by necessity, inhabited by the small and slender. It is an ecosystem in miniature, hidden away out of reach and out of sight of the islands' lumbering beasts.

Fishooks, growing up to 20 inches long including their bushy tails, are fishing specialists, one of just a few siphonteeth to do so. They easily navigate the thickets, clinging to each twig and liana with any one of their four walking limbs. Seven fingers per hand provide unmatched stability, while each of the paired hind digits has a single grasping claw which can fold around perches for a hook-like grasp. With very wide ears, with the characteristic joint at their lower back edge that allows them to move - or stay still - independent of jaw movements, they listen for any sign of danger, keeping tabs on their surroundings as they focus on spotting a meal. They climb down the trees toward the water, suspending themselves by tightly-folded hind limbs just an inch or two above the surface, and there they lie motionless with only the flickering back and forth movements of their eyes to give any indication they are there. A distinctive banded pattern that runs along their limbs breaks up their outline, hiding them against the many twigs and vines.

Fishooks are visual predators, with the ability to compensate for light refraction, meaning that they strike exactly where their food really is, rather than where it appears to be on the surface - an impressive cognitive feat. Their target is small baitfish - mollyminnows - as well as crustaceans, aquatic insects, and the smallest young of other marine life, including snarks. When a target approaches, the fishook twitches with anticipation, moving in slight, jerking movements ever so slightly closer to its victim. Then, when it is perfectly angled just above, it strikes with a splash. Its hind legs release all their stored energy, catapulting its body downwards, while at the same time its lower jaw shoots outward, adding half again to its length. The tip of its tooth is finely barbed, making it difficult for the prey to free itself when speared. Once food is captured, the fishook quickly clambers upwards into the branches and takes hold of the meal in its hands to prevent it struggling and potentially injuring its tooth. Now it injects a digestive enzyme in its saliva, which begins to break down flesh into a soup-like nutrient slurry that it can consume as a liquid with syringe-like pumping motions of its upper tooth into the hollow tube formed by its lower one, creating suction into its mouth.

While usually solitary, the male fishook courts a mate by providing her offerings of food. Pairs are not long lasting, remaining together for just a few days, and males will court many females in a year. Mothers give birth to a single offspring, unusual for animals so small, but their only child is given round the clock care and attention. It is kept close by at all times on her own back until it becomes too heavy to carry, after which she hangs it right next to her in the branches as she hunts, so that it may learn her techniques. Young spend around six month with their parent, dispersing as the female gives birth to the next offspring.

~~~

On the opposite scale, the masacura is a gigantic predator, the biggest of that is found only here. It is a fully marine skuorc growing to a length of up to 30 feet, but it is not a whiskerwhale, though it is very close. Endemic to the trilliontrees, where it dwells preferentially in shallow, muddy water that hides its great form, this animal is actually a fully aquatic species of swampstalker, one which has lost its ties to land and independently become a seagoing species, taking advantage of the productive near-shore ecosystems of the hothouse oceans. Freed from the burden of bearing its weight in the full gravity of land, the masacura is the biggest swampstalker of all.

This is a predatory animal with a gigantic skull itself almost five feet in length and elongated blade-like jaws that come together with dozens of serrated cusps, forming a large angular cutting surface that gives this hunter the ability to cleanly cut huge portions of meat in a single bite. Though it has a fluked tail and flipper-like limbs, however, the masacura is not a swift animal, rather preferring to step along the bottom of the many shallow channels and saltwater rivers between islands. Lying here, hidden, it is an ambush predator, one which can strike large land skuorcs as they cross along the narrowest - and deceptively safest-seeming - points in the channels between one island and another. One wrong step, and the masacura launches itself forcefully from its hidden resting place and tears at the limb of its victim, sometimes clipping a foot straight off with a horrifying show of its strength and the sharpness of its beak. So gravely wounded, the prey animal can do little to escape before the hunter makes a second attack, often grasping the underbelly and ripping the helpless beast open. Blood in the water attracts scavengers, and the wayward land creature, caught unaware in a narrow gap in its world, is eaten alive not only by the killer but by myriad smaller, swarming things well before it has expired. It is a grisly death from a quiet, unassuming apex predator that is cryptic, well hidden, and all too easy to miss, until it is simply too late.

But only very large masacuras rival with the likes of skuagators as apex predators, hunting land animals as big as adolescent skulosi, which are very abundant in the islands. And it also happens, only male masacuras ever reach the size which permits them to do so. Juveniles, born around 3 feet long head to tail, can only catch fish, the littlest of snarks, and small seabirds on their own accord. Adult females, growing to around 18 feet, are not small fries, but lack the power to bring down giants, and feed primarily on marine animals, only occasionally succeeding in ambushing some smaller land dweller, like a loopalope. The size and power of the oldest males is their way of signaling their fitness to mates, and sharing their huge kills with females guarantees their loyalty when time comes to breed. Males are highly territorial, claiming stretches of water where prey is forced to cross, and competing for the richest hunting ground; smaller females move freely between them, choosing the most impressive males with the most food to share. And far from a mindless killer, the male masacura is also a competent parent; it is he, not the females, which stays with the young once they are born. Under his protection they are threatened by no one; fed on the scraps of his food, they want for nothing. They remain nearby him, whirling about in small shoals, for up to a year before he begins to nudge them off on their own. Parental care exists in all swampstalkers, a contrast to most whiskerwhales. But this is the only species where the male does all of the work; it is also the most energetically efficient way to secure the young survive, for the male can keep away danger simply by his size alone, whilst the amount of food the young take is insubstantial relative to how much he acquires in a single kill; in contrast, a single female would struggle to provide such an abundance of food to her offspring, and its growth would be slower and its life comparatively far more precarious.

~~~

Sometimes included among the griffons of Serinaustra (a paraphyletic term for many larger, superficial similar skueasels) the draguar is a large descendant species of the lutrine skueasel, having reached the southrnmost Trilliontrees thanks to its ancestors powerful swimming endurance. But unlike the other lineages of these animals, the draguar is a very short animal, even though it can reach six feet in length. Its legs are unusually small, which suits it well to navigate through reedbeds and shallow marshes, and to swim, folding its legs up entirely and pushing itself along with its flattened tail. Draguars are distinctive for their unique head plumage - a crest around their entire neck, which can be erected into a frill to appear much larger during threatening situations. When at rest, the long feathers of the frill relax along the animal's neck, resembling the scales of a dragon. It is from this, in conjunction with the animal's very long, almost serpentine body shape, that its common name is derived.

Carnivores that are skilled fishers and stealthy stalkers of water birds, draguars are also capable predators of bigger game. Cat-like and sneaky, they are primarily ambush predators, and having reached islands with few other competiting hunters, they also hunt on land, creeping close to a target in dense grassy cover and then pouncing before it can flee. Aiming for a clean, quick bill with a bite to the throat, a draguar dispatches its quarry, often waterbirds, and vanishes with the kill in an instant into thick cover to feed. In water their strategy differs, and they use their agility to chase down fish and other food more actively, gliding under the surface with the utmost of ease, mainly catching bite-sized fare one at a time. The beak alone is used to catch food, while the claws are not especially dexterous, nor sharp.

Draguars are widely distributed across the islands but they are most common in the southernmost region where fewer competitors exist, where they frequent the varied habitat of fresh, brackish, and saltwater environments and den on higher islands above the high tide line. When feeding at sea, they may sometimes become lost, but can tread water for days at a time,which has enabled their colonization of many outlying isles, and the trilliontrees broadly. The closest relative of the draguar, the sea skueasel, expands upon this ability and has become completely marine, crossing the seaway and being abundant along the coast of continental Serinarcta. Draguars are functionally solitary but are not intolerant of each other. Females share overlapping ranges with males and sometimes males often share food with mates. Sometimes, pairs may spend time together even when the female is not receptive to mate, though hunting is done singly and not cooperatively. Females care for their young for up to six months, actively protecting them from predators and finding them food; the young imprint on their mother, while avoiding unfamiliar adults which may threaten them, though cannibalism does not occur in this species. Males may meet their own young, with a small percentage actively aiding in teaching them to hunt, especially as the young grow older and begin to leave their mother for longer periods of time. Individuals communicate with chirping calls; threatened draguars produce a deep hissing sound and will puff up their normally sleek feather coats in addition to extending their neck frills to seem much bigger than they really are. 

~~~

Not all sea creatures of the trilliontrees are fearsome hunters, and neither do all live lives exclusively along the water. The fenghuang is a large higher gilltail bird which can be found on only one isle in the Trilliontrees, the largest one, known as the Island of Eden. There, the large, fruit-eating adult is uncommonly seen but present, spending its life in the high canopy of the forest, little seen despite its extravagant plumage in nearly every shade of color.

Fenghuangs belong to a family of higher gilltails called the dragoformes, related - though not very similar to - the small, kingfisher-like dartlarks. They are omnivores, and the only thing that they share with those relatives is an herbivorous algae-eating larval stage, and a long, pointed bill in the adult. Young have a duck-like keratin bill which is used to scrounge up algae and detritus in the bottoms of slow-flowing streams. They are abundant on the island, but their habitat is very restricted, and all of them live in one freshwater waterway. Beginning life as tadpoles less than an inch across, the most fortunate few may reach a size of 32 inches within three years, and then undertake a remarkable journey upriver to the very highest point of the river, at the center of Eden, where all water begins it journey to the sea. To do this, they must clamber up steep, slippery waterfalls along the way, and to manage it they transform; fleshy, salamander-like fingers develop large, hooked spurs to clamber upwards, on a slow and labored journey that takes around two months. They come up this way not to mate, for they are still infants, and the urge of procreation is still long away. They have come here to pupate, in the safety and shelter of the high-elevation forest, a plateau long ago built by the upward growth and fusion of spire forests, now populated by thickets of dancingtrees which have overtaken the original cementrees that created them. They are among the biggest of all gilltail larvae, and they need a place to hide from enemies for over 5 months while they transform from one life stage to another. They clamber into the hollow chambers of the ancient cementrees, and descend up to 100 feet below the surface, into a dark, damp, and secluded labrynth of eons-old tunnels. Here, they produce a cocoon of mucous and begin their greatest journey yet, that from child to adult. And here, they will ultimately clamber back out utterly transformed. A duck-like bill falls off like a glove; a sharp, angular one grows beneath it, to feed on rainforest fruit and small animals. Plumage, still just quills, begins to break through the skin. The legs grow longer, and so does the neck. When all is done, nothing will remain to remember the way it once was.

The loong is another large dragoforme gilltail that can also be found upon the Island of Eden, as well as a few nearby isles. Closely related to the fenghuang, the loong is significantly bigger, though like its relative, only a small percentage of them ever reach their full adulthood. Loongs take the metamorphic lifestyle of their lineage and extend it further, adding an additional step. Life begins as a tadpole, hatched from an egg deposited in slow-moving or stagnant freshwater ponds, which grows to up to three feet in length on a diet of detritus before it pupates in a mucous cocoon burrowed into the shoreline. But the bird which will emerge, transformed, from the mud some four months later is quite unlike its cousin. It is dull in color, brown and gray, in a stark contrast to the fenghuang. It can fly, and it vanishes into the thickest jungle within minutes, fluttering and clambering its way into the forest and away from ground-based predators. There it may live for many years, little seen, always wary, and feeding mainly upon insects and smaller vertebrates, rather than on fruit. In this way, it does not compete heavily with its relative on the island. The loong, then, is an adult. Within a few months of emergence, it can reproduce. Neither sex is ornamented, and there is no outward difference between them. But such adults are not fully grown. Many will never be.

Loongs change, ever so slowly, with each year of their life. Unlike most birds, their growth never entirely ceases. They get heavier, and eventually the biggest of them lose their faculties of flight, becoming too big for their wings, so that they only flutter from perch to perch, and eventually spend most of their time on the ground. Their necks get longer relative to their bodies as each vertebrate lengthens, and the neck becomes less flexible as a result. Old adults are less carnivorous than young ones, and up to half the diet can now become fruits and seeds - the fenghuang doesn't feed on the ground, and so their diets don't conflict. Normally, these changes are very gradual, taking years. And when a loong gets very old, or when the forest becomes too crowded, and the adults begin to come into conflict over territory, the largest, oldest individuals - usually a dominant pair - will enter a more rapid period of maturation, a second puberty perhaps ten, perhaps twenty years after their first. They molt their feathers, and the plumage that grows is radically different. Earth tones transform into sky blue, green, violet, and white. The tail feathers of the male continue to grow until they are as long as the rest of its body, so that from beaktip to tailtip, he can reach twenty feet long and weigh 140 lbs.

Once fully colored, the superadult loong loses all its lifelong shyness, and leaves the forest, moving toward the island's rivers. Their bright plumage shines in the sunlight, and now they have little to fear. Their beaks, always sharp, have by now sprouted many small, sharp spines of keratin. They begin feeding on fish, diving their heads up to seven feet below water while perched on shore, a diving bird that never has to get its feet wet. Unlike the adult, the superadult loong is monogamous and forms a pair bond with another of its type. These pairs, in turn, have a different and more complex way of reproduction. Egg clutches are no longer abandoned to their fate in the wetland, but now nurtured attentively in a small, slow-flowing nursery pool dug out by the male off the side of a river and blocked with stones. Here, both parents guard their developing tadpoles for months, even feeding them small, finely-shredded tidbits of meat as they grow. Superadult loong have fewer young than adults do, but unlike adults, nearly all of them will grow up until they are big enough to leave the nursery pool and travel away to pupate. Despite their different parents, and uncommon upbringing, they will be indistinguishable from the other adults once they metamorphose. Superadults are genetically identical to adults, representing only an additional life stage acquired by a small percentage of the population, which increases their survival chances by allowing them to switch niches if their adult habitat no longer can support so many individuals. Superadults in turn limit their own numbers, for they are even more territorial, and established pairs will chase or - kill off - rival pairs in their stretch of river. Unable to fly, displaced individuals may instead migrate over water to other islands, a risky venture in predator-ridden seas, but one that has occasionally paid off, for unlike the fenghuang, the loong can be found on multiple islands.

~~~~

Somtimes a marine animal gradually loses its connection to the seas from which its ancestors arose entirely - at every life stage, and not just when adult. The walloping waspeng is a species of pinguipug descended from the pummel, which is completely terrestrial. It is a huge bird and one of the biggest sparrowgulls, standing as tall as two men - up to 12 feet tall - but weighing as much as 10, at 1,800 pounds.

Waspengs are extremely colorful birds, their nearly featherless hides covered in a tapestry of red, yellow and black bands, and where they occur across the Trilliontree Islands, they are impossible to miss. They are loud, garish, boisterous, and - unlike their predecessor -  gregarious. Males yell and shove here and there during mating times, but both sexes form herds of dozens in which they travel the islands, browsing trees, grazing grasses, and foraging in both freshwater and saltwater wetlands. And in an unexpected inversion of the dynamic seen in their ancestor, wherever these herds roam, gantuans like cygnosaurs or skulossi - giant skuorcs able to reach most of these close-spaced islands by swimming from one to another from the mainland - are likely to be absent. For the waspeng has evolved such an effective defense against these former competitors, that they have gained dominion over much of this region as undisputed browsing herbivores with no land predators of their own.

The waspeng is venomous, and has evolved a spur on each wingtip, which is connected to a venom gland in their inner arm, evolved from a set of oil glands used in earlier pretenguins to waterproof their plumage. Venom is very rare in large animals, and even moreso in primarily plant-eating ones. In most animals, its production is expensive - in quantities large enough to kill, it takes time and energy to produce, especially as many venomous hunters are small and rely on ambush to strike their victims. For creatures that only eat occasionally, a single bite or sting can empty the animal's reserves for some time, and so leave it either vulnerable, or less able to hunt. Yet venom is not complicated to produce - much of its structure is simple proteins and amino acids, and venom has independently evolved in many dozens of animal lineages over history through small changes in the structure of these proteins. The reason that large animals usually lack venom is likely more related to its inefficiency as a hunting tool past a certain size, when the hunter's own strength is likely to be more effective to make a kill than to rely on injecting a huge dose of toxins every time it needs to eat.

But the waspeng is an outlier among venomous animals, for its venom does not exist to kill prey. It is a defense, and a very necessary one, for it is the only thing which keeps the waspeng's much bigger competitors from depleting its small island homes of their vegetation, a cause of extinction for several earlier species of pinguipug birds. Waspengs do not need to produce enough toxin to kill a cygnosaur, only enough to hurt it and cause it to avoid them from then on. Like a bee, the waspeng's banded coloration serves as a warning - and by adapting to live in groups rather than fight each other for territory, they can swarm would-be rivals of other, larger species and drive them away. The sting of this unusual bird is delivered with a forceful punch; the spur, through which a hollow channel delivers the venom, folds away like a switchblade, being unveiled at the last moment as the wrist makes forceful contact with its target, and injects up to a full liquid ounce of toxin into the flesh. For an animal as big as a cygnosaur, this is painful - excruciatingly so, for the venom is a cytotoxin which kills cells and causes necrosis - but is nowhere near fatal. A single waspeng sting can be enough to cause a gantuan to turn away and retreat, while a herd which is hungry and seeking a meal might require a swarm of these giant "penguin bees" working together to attack in order to be convinced. Though the waspeng's venom is considerably less potent drop for drop compared to most venomous animals of smaller size, it makes up for it in quantity. Because they are large animals and feed continuously, waspengs have the energy available to produce huge stores of venom, enough to sting repeatedly, ultimately releasing up to half a liter of their toxin if necessary in a single sitting, which takes only a few days to regenerate enough to let it sting again, albeit not nearly as often for several weeks. It would take less than 1/2 ounce to kill a human being in minutes.

Because it can defend itself with its stinging hits, the waspeng has no land predators. It roams with abandon across the Trilliontrees, and has developed a fearless nature and extremely unpleasant attitude to all other animals, which have learned to avoid it like the plague. Chicks as young as two weeks have sequestered enough venom in their glands to begin stinging enemies, so that there are few limiting factors to their survival on a given island except for their food supply. There are limits to everything in nature, though, and not even the waspeng is totally invulnerable. When food becomes scarce, and herds too dense, migrations must occur to a new island with more to eat. Then, marine predators may target them, for they are slow and ungainly swimmers. Giant snarks, occasional visitors to the island's waterways, are their worst threat, because their venom evolved to effectively target birds, not snails, on which its venom is not highly effective due to their vastly different physiology. Other marine predators, even the huge masacura, know better than to so much as try a taste of this spicy penguin. Snarks like calacarnas are more common in deeper waters, and have successfully limited the waspeng's spread to the smaller outer islands of the archipelago. It is most widely distributed on only a few of the near-continental islands, and becomes scarce the further out one goes.

~~~

As the waspeng shows, in isolated island environments, animals are sometimes able to evolve in ways which would be unlikely, if not impossible, in more competitive continental ecosystems - indeed, seed worlds such as Serina demonstrate these principles on a grand, worldwide scale. And when it comes to islands, Serina can showcase some of its most unique species of all.

Slawjaws are a clade of plant-eating tribbetheres which first evolved upon the Trilliontree Islands. With robust teeth used to chop down plant stalks, grasping forearms, and a sturdy tail which is able to help support their body weight, their ancestry as molodonts is apparent. Slawjaws are often colorful, with long fur serving as a display structure, because on their islands these animals have few predators, and do not need to remain hidden to catch a diet of plants. This latter point is particularly important, because the slawjaws evolved from carnivores. They are the only predominately vegetarian sawjaws in the world.

These animals are related to the springheels and descend from a small insular species of that lineage, the springing monkcat. This was an early springheel whose ancestor island-hopped to this archipelago region 10 million years ago, either on large vegetation rafts broken away from coastal areas in hurricanes, or possibly by swimming across narrow channels between islands - both are plausible for a small, but energetic opportunist such as that species. The lineage which reached the islands soon spread further across them, diversifying rapidly. Prey on these islands is often dominated by two size guilds - the very small, which can get by on limited resources - and the gigantic, those huge animals (often skuorcs) which survive by moving from island to island, depleting resources and then traveling to another. The latter's nomadic, destructive lifestyle favors the former's adaptability, while limiting mid-size animal species from being as successful here as in mainland environments. Springheels, as a small predator, survived very well, initially getting much of their food in the form of seabirds which bred on small near-shore islands. Others reduced in size further, specializing in insect diets. Arboreal species evolved too, but retained strong powers of locomotion over the ground to travel between forest patches as they were browsed down by megafauna. Large predators on the islands were primarily subjugator sawjaws, which competitively excluded these new colonists from evolving down similar lines. But there was one lifestyle which did encourage the slawjaw's ancestors to become much larger than before. 

The island ecology here was unique from the Serinarctan mainland, being particularly lacking in cementrees but extremely abundant in fast-growing flora such as dancing trees (thicket-forming clover trees known for swaying in the wind due to their small, flexible trunks) and large grasses like polepoa (a succulent, stand-forming plant vaguely similar in niche to bamboo, though far less woody.) These plants were adapted to have their tops trimmed by herbivores, and to regenerate in a matter of weeks by pulling energy from large clonal root stocks below ground in which huge quantities of nutrients were stored. Both clades are otherwise much more diverse in Serinaustra rather than Serinarcta, owing to different types of herbivore pressures (neither is well-adapted to constant clipping by low-grazers like thorngrazers, which are scarce or absent, coincidentally, on both Serinaustra and the Trilliontrees.) The latter plants in particular are known to be extremely sweet, as its extraordinary regenerative growth contains free sugars rather than starches, and so it is very palatable and high in energy. Because of this, many organisms consume polepoa; the inside of the stems are colonized by many types of insects, small molodonts, and other animals which can find sustenance on these natural sweets. But in most polepoas, only the younger shoots are sweet; the sugars transform to starches as the stalks mature. Then, it is really only the huge gantuans and other skuorcs which still readily eat the canopies of the mature plant, which is only nutritious if consumed in bulk.

Slawjaws evolved from springheels which first started hunting insects and other prey hiding inside polepoa stalks, slashing open the soft canes and collecting the meaty prize within. Their evolution from only eating the animals which ate the plant, to eating the plant itself, closely mirrors the evolution of some formerly carnivorous Serinaustran burdles. Like those animals, it did not take long to learn that the plant, too, was worth eating. Even sawjaws, with their short carnivorous guts, could digest the simple sugars present, and further, sawjaws had not been obligate carnivores long enough to lose their ability to taste sugars, as their ancestors living in trees before the recent ice age would have also fed occasionally on fruit. Over time, some springheels ate the plant as the majority of their diet, for it was superabundant at almost all times; polepoa was indeed specialized to explode with new, sweet shoots after being browsed down by giant herbivores, and so the slawjaw ancestors came to follow the herds to take advantage of the nutritious new stalks which appeared just day after they passed through the forest. Polepoa doesn't run away, so slawjaws didn't need to be fast. It can't see you coming, and it has no defenses, so slawjaws didn't have to hide, nor did they have to fight. They became brightly colored, to better see one another in the forest. They grew much bigger, became slower, and became gentler. 

The only significant enemies of the larger slawjaws today, like the beautiful 300 pound aureate slawjaw with its golden, flowing mane and long, white-tufted ears, are their larger subjugator relatives, but these animals hardly prefer to eat other sawjaws versus their typical skuorc targets, a matter of food-imprinting (with sawjaws being notoriously picky in what they recognize as prey) and logistics (aureate sawjaws are slow-breeding, fairly lean animals that neither taste as good as bigger game, nor are abundant enough to sustain predators.) Even so, when a larger enemy is sensed, slawjaws do have a defense. They create very large burrows in which to shelter, and retreat down them when threatened, blocking the entrance with their snapping jaws and large forearm claws. These enormous tunnels, serving as defenses for both solitary adults and shelter for their offspring, can be 6 feet wide, extending over 60 feet laterally and 15 feet below ground, and are continually maintained over years. Many slawjaws will even have several of them - escape shoots near all of their favored feeding grounds, used as necessary, for they are long-lived animals and can remain on a territory for decades. Digging is done with all of the claws, but especially those on the tail, which is very robust and shaped somewhat like an excavator.

Aureate slawjaws are typical among their group in having grasping digits on their arm claws, derived from their sickle talons, now used to hold plant stalks to enable easier feeding. They are bipedal runners but can walk on their tails at slower speeds, and will prop themselves up with one leg and their tail to reach higher polepoa shoots. All slawjaws also share another unusual trait in the form of bright red teeth, for which this genus is named. This coloration comes from iron deposits in the animals' enamel that strengthen the tooth's defenses against cavities formed from bacteria that feed on the sugar left behind on its mouth surfaces by the animal's specialized diet. Though the teeth grow continuously and so outer surfaces are regularly worn away, cavities into the tooth roots would be catastrophic and could deform and weaken the teeth, so this defense has evolved to counter it. Slawjaws acquire iron from consuming soil as they burrow, and indeed rely on this for many minerals lacking in their simple diet. They are not entirely specialized in diet though; in addition to polepoa, aureate slawjaws will at times feed on flowers, berries, certain seeds, molluscs such as snails, insects, small vertebrates, and carrion including seaside refuse. The total diet is around 75% vegetarian, and of that percentage, 60-70% of it is comprised of polepoa. No other sawjaws approach these percentages, though some other species may consume plant foods incidentally, up to as much as 30% of the diet in some small arboreal forms of the northern forests, which may consume significant amounts of fruit.

~~~

The Trilliontrees are a biome full of oddities. There are few normally common herbivores, which has favored the strange adaptations of the slawjaws, once predators, now grass-eaters. There are only a few thorngrazers on the trilliontrees, because most of them are poor swimmers. These islands have never supported large, armored species which altered the continental landscape for many millions of years. But now, in the late hothouse, there can be found a few smaller species here, particularly the gracile loopalopes - which can swim, if not especially well - and littler members of the unicorn family, some of which were so small as to be able to reach from one island to another by rafting on mats of vegetation washed out to sea in storms. This is the backstory for the clarion, the smallest thorngrazer so far, but one whose temper is truly terrible!

Clarions are descendants of hillhoppers which, as spire forest habitat transitioned to sky islands and rose upwards further out of its reach, sought shelter in dancing tree forests along coastal southern Serinarcta. At first with small goat-like hooves, they leapt up the trunks and took shelter in the branches, where they also found food. But these coastal forests were vulnerable to hurricanes, which could blow whole tracts of them down and out to sea. So the ancestor of the clarion undertook an unwanted trip over seas to near-shore islands. And so the trilliontrees got a great rarity. Another thorngrazer. It was like finding a unicorn... almost.

For the clarion is not a true unicorn, but a sister lineage. It is much littler than any unicorn, with a proportionally huge head, in total weighing about twelve pounds. Yet it shares much in common with its bigger kin, especially a similar set of crests, through which it produces a varied range of noisy calls, from which it gets it name (shared with a type of trumpet.) Their typical voice is a harsh, nasal honk, sustained like the toot of a kazoo. It is emitted whenever the clarion is upset, which is nearly all the time, for this animal, relatively well-off from danger compared to mainland species, is exceedingly angry in the way that only a true down-to-roots thorngrazer could be. The clarion may be a pipsqueak now, but it remembers when its kind were huge, hulking monsters, and it retains their demeanor. It no longer a tree-climber, because food is available practically anywhere on these tropical islands, and now it forages mainly on the ground, eating roots, fruits, tubers, and green leaves, but typically only the softest and most tender among them, for it is a selective feeder of more energy-rich morsels than other thorngrazers. Foraging singly in thick undergrowth, the clarion scratches in the leaf litter to uncover dropped fruits and seeds left behind by flying species as they feed high overhead. With its nose to the ground, it may seem distracted, but is always wary of its surroundings thanks to its long, radar dish-like ears, and anything that seems to be coming too close will be greeted by a sudden jump up and a charge, accompanied by furious kazoo-calling. So bold and brash is the clarion, that even a much larger animal is likely to be taken aback by its brazen attitude, which can give it time to turn and run from a threat it truly cannot face down, or - more often - encourages it to keep going, charging and slashing the intruder with its sharp tusks. For such a small meal, risking a grisly leg wound or worse is rarely worth it, and most things will leave the nasty little creature alone. And so, its defense is a successful one. Except for when, occasionally, their bluff is called, and the blustering little beast ends up as a snack. A balance is thus tentatively maintained, in which the clarion knows just how obnoxious to be before calling its losses and making an escape. And so most, though never all, come out of their conflicts unscathed.

The female clarion is a simple, solitary creature. She will fight any other female she comes across, and these battles are frequent, if rarely harmful; to a larger, stronger animal, they come across as little more than slap fights where each opponent whacks its snout at the other until one retreats and is chased away quickly. A mother does not even tolerate her own young with her for more than a few weeks before she drives them off with a push and a shove. These small thorngrazers breed quickly and often; 2 to 4 calves a time, up to three times a year, makes them world-record holding thorngrazers for fecundity. Males, to their credit, are slightly more social. Not to other males - they hate each other almost as much as the females, though their conflicts are more often bluster than battle. But the male has a second type of call, very different from its primary honk, reserved exclusively for the opposite sex. On quiet nights, when the planetlight is bright, the males will sing, producing a call that begins as a quiet hum and rises over several minutes into a beautiful, melodious trill. It is for her ears only, a receptive female, who will seek out only the most wonderful of the many voices of the nighttime forest. The meeting of male and female is brief, lasting seconds, and ends with a scuffle, as if the female must quickly reaffirm her ferocity after a short moment of letting down her guard. And if, by most terrible luck, another male comes by when another is in the midst of his secret song, all melody will end in an instant, replaced by the far more magical sound... of two furiously angry kazoos, vigorously engaged in another silly little war of words.

~~~

The fluteloop is the trilliontree's only loopalope, a species which have managed to colonize several of the islands closest to the continent. It resembles several close relatives in pattern, but differs greatly in the formation of its crests. A member of the varied and far-flung Circoronus genus which includes the blue-hooped loopalope of the continental savannah and the twirling curloop of Zarreland, fluteloops have extremely reduced twisting in their crests, which only twirl in a very tight corkscrew pattern at their bases. Most of the crest length is straight and smooth - an adaptation to avoids it getting caught up in tree branches as it runs from danger - and for most of the year, it is covered in a short coat of fuzzy, brown fur.  Indeed, the fluteloop is a relatively cryptic loopalope, especially compared to its closest relatives. Primarily a dull, grey-brown hue with subdued bands and pale golden cheeks, it is far less extravagant in pelage than most, and its color serves to let it disappear into the dappled light of the dense forest rather than to be seen from afar by all comers. A shy, retiring thorngrazer, the fluteloop travels in pairs or small groups, dispersed quite widely around the jungle, often out of sight but never out of earshot. Both sexes have crests, though the males' are longer, and through them these creatures produce warbling, flute-like song.

 Fluteloop calls are not simple advertisement of territory, as in most loopalopes, but are used to communicate information between individuals - and they are complex and varied, though sung so fast that the subtle changes of tone that convey context are hard to distinguish for human ears. Further, these high-pitched and very melodious calls are a secret language that is often drowned out in the background sounds of birdsong and insects; though the ears of the fluteloops themselves are fine-tuned to hear them, they are often ignored by potential predators as simple background static, seeming to originate from a small bird flying up somewhere in the canopy, and surely not worth the effort to hunt. Traveling through the jungle thickets and browsing on the undergrowth, fluteloops may seem solitary, but they are never alone; a secret network of musical musings carries through the trees, pinging from one fluteloop to another, a widespread communication network that gives warning of dangers and invites others to a large food source to share, such as when a local tree has dropped a crop of fruit.

The back and forth songs of the fluteloop also allow them to coordinate on an even grander scale. Every year, but never at quite the same time or place, all of the fluteloops on a given island will gather to mate. Predators can never surprise them there, for only the fluteloops know the place to gather, and never do they amass in the same spot twice. They pick a site each year. The oldest, most dominant individuals may be the ones to first decide through their distant messaging to one another, and then they spread the word to all corners of the island, a game of telephone where each carries on a message to the next of its neighbors in an ongoing chain. For a few short weeks, thousands of fluteloops ascend together; the males undergo a remarkable transformation, which has been prepared months in advance. The hide on their crests splits and is sloughed off on trees and rocks, like the velvet of a deer's antlers. Once stripped away, a new layer of brightly colored pink and blue skin is revealed. This is not a behavior without some precursor; all crested thorngrazers shed their outer epidermis periodically, but rarely is it so noticeable. The male fluteloops retain their bare skin for only a short time, only long enough to strut and sing and compete for female company. Once the herds break up, and the gathering comes to its end, the male's crests have dulled. A new coat of short fur will have already begun to grow, and soon it will be cryptic and brown once again, like a fancy dress put away in the closet until the next occasion calls for it. When the next invitation comes in, he will be ready. 

~~~

These islands support several very large herbivores. Skuorcs like gantuans, close related to mainland species, are present, but some islands which have few of them have developed their own unusual replacements from unexpected alternative ancestors. The gobblodon is an endemic, plant-eating, reptilian bird found across the Trilliontrees. It is the biggest species in the skuagator genus, and the most divergent among them, for it is utterly gigantic, reaching a head height of seven feet and a body length of up to 25. While they begin life small and slender, with body shapes like other skuagators and a carnivore diet, as this species grows it acquires a distinctly stocky, short-bodied form with a very wide torso, which accomodates a fermenting stomach unlike the small gut of its relatives. This is because the adult gobblodon, strangely, is an herbivore. The shift in diet is gradual, for the young is an eager predator of anything it can catch, with plants becoming incorporated into their meals beginning around six years old. The change hastens toward their tenth year as they begin eating mainly plant material, which also coincides with the development of the large gut and subsequent slower movement. These hulking skuorcs, once they reach an age of ten to twelve years, then leave the water for good, after which they will do most of their foraging on dry land. They are important seed dispersers for several island plants, including the grandiose moon melon, a massive golden fruit produced by a climbing plant in the vining flameflower family, which hangs low from the canopy on a sturdy stem when ripe. The melon is sweet and nutritious but so large - up to 3 feet across - and protected by a hard rind, that it is nearly inaccessible to animals until broken open by the gobblodon (a messy eater, which is sure to leave some scraps behind.)

Gobblodons are not territorial, a stark contrast to carnivorous skuagators. The sheer abundance of vegetation available to eat means there is no reason to fight over resources, and so the gobblodon continues to live in small, loose groups throughout its entire life. Communal living has its benefits, for it provides protection from enemies like the swamp subjugator which may tackle a single individual, but will struggle to catch one from a herd. Though vegetarian, with raking bill serrations in its jaws to strip leaves from branches, the gobblodon retains an extraordinarily powerful bite with which it can shatter the bones of would-be predators. Furthermore, pointed scutes of solid bone line its thick tail like a mace; herds form circles with their heads together and swing their tails outwards; each one carries enough force to break a subjugator's knee.

Though once grown it is a very poor hunter, this animal will still eat dead things without any hesitation, and functions as a faculative scavenger. A female gobblodon also has a very high need for dietary calcium when she is pregnant with a litter of up to thirty small young. To build their skeletons, she must consume as much of this mineral as she can find, and to get it she will scavenge carcasses - or steal kills from other hunters, grinding up the bones in her pulverizing jaws. Unlike any other skuagator, she does not abandon her young immediately after birth or attempt to eat her own offspring. A sedate plant-eater, she is a safe refuge for her chicks that few other animals will dare approach. She gives birth at night, instinctively seeking out a wet, forested area to give birth. Here she will remain for up to a month, tending her young as they hunt for insects and small vertebrates, resting near them often partially submerged in water as they gather on her back. Only once they are competent hunters and capable of avoiding their many enemies does she eventually leave them to their fate, with a better head-start on life than is afforded to most. Yet even these chicks, each only about 20 inches long at birth, have about 1 in 200 odds of reaching full maturity; they face many dangers early in life, including other members of their genus which will eat them. The high reproductive output of the female only compensates for this very high infant mortality, which is more the rule than the exception among most skuorc lineages.

From the forest floor, we rise into the trees to meet our next species. The melodious monkcat is a charismatic member of a family of most unusual sawjaws found only in the Trilliontree Islands region, and relatives to the slawjaws which have only increased their tree-climbing adaptations rather than lost them. Known as the swinging monkcats, they are the most arboreal of the trilliontree sawjaws, and the only ones in the world which have evolved as brachiators, swinging from tree to tree by their forearms. Swinging monkcats of the genus Redeobrachiucrus are the most skilled swingers of all, and the translation of this genus name reflects the specialization of their limbs for this role - their ancestors' arms became their legs to run on the ground, and now have become grasping arms again, as these creatures returned to a life in the trees for the first time since before the Mid-Ultimocene ice age.

Swinging monkcats like the melodious monkcat are primarily fruit-eaters, more than any other sawjaw, and they forage over wide territories in the island's jungles for their preferred diet, which is often very patchily distributed as fruiting trees rarely bloom all at the same time, in the same place. Their teeth have lost their shearing cusps and have become small and rounded, adapted no longer to tear flesh and slice bone, but to crush the hard pits and seeds of the fruit they consume - a remarkable return to an ancient form! Despite this, some seeds do survive ingestion, for the monkcats are messy eaters, and as they travel through the forest, they disperse them in their droppings.

Melodious monkcats are particularly social animals, living in troops of several dozen, led by coalitions of males which are both larger and distinctly colored with black and orange coats, while females are olive green and subdued - in both cases, the monkcat carries its own color pattern from birth. Both sexes have vibrant blue eyes as adults, while juveniles have golden ones; this is a way that adults can quickly judge the age of an unfamiliar individual, as the pelage alone does not give clear indication of age. Juveniles with golden eyes are given a great deal of leniency, while adults are expected to behave according to strict social hierarchies. Females disperse into new troops, while males remain in those of their birth and form strong social bonds with their mothers that persist throughout her lifetime. Both sexes in a group have separate social hierarchies; males are generally less aggressive than females within a troop, as their hierarchy is more stable, for males do not enter the group except by birth, but adult females regularly join in from outside, causing shuffles in the pecking order. By forming strong social bonds, males can remain control of a troop for generations, with sons inheriting the role from their fathers - this means the troop is usually very stable. Because males remain in the group instead of leaving, there are no bands of roving males without troops that seek to take over one. This social system has resulted in increased peace for all, versus some earlier ancestors and contemporary relatives where males are more competitive, and more prone to disperse at maturity. All males in a troop can reproduce, though lower ranking ones may have to sneak around and do so when their superiors are otherwise distracted. Because both sexes are polygamous, males cannot be assured any offspring is not their own, and so all males protect all infants in the clan - but not necesarilly those born to the most recently arrived females, as their young would come from other fathers.  

These unusual sawjaws move through the trees using their forelegs to grasp branches, usually suspended beneath them in an upright posture with their very long tails angled down and ahead of them. The tails, being very thin and wiry, are not used to bear weight when swinging, but instead function to gather food in place of the arms, picking berries and lifting them to the mouth in quick succession as the animal meanders about. Tails are also used for reassuring social contact, and individuals regularly tap each other in a group, maintaining close company; it is rare for a monkcat to stray out of tail's reach with at least one other troop member. Melodious monkcats have an extraordinary range of vocalizations, many of which are used to tell others the location of a discovered food source, and to describe the amount of food available, and even what kind of food it may be. They can produce noises ranging from very loud, whistling calls to low-pitched, echoing booms that seem far too large for an animal only weighing around five pounds, and males regularly sing in chorus, often at dusk and dawn, to claim territorial rights and keep rival troops at bay. Females are a little quieter, but have their own range of warbles and chirps used to keep in touch with their infants. Many of these calls are learned, and dialects vary in different, semi-isolated populations of a single species living on different islands. Some however are innate, and understood even by the newborns: a shrill panic call of "Tseet!" indicates danger in the form of a predator and causes even the youngest to freeze and cower. More specific details can be provided in additional modifier sounds to the "tseet" call, indicating what type of enemy it is (land, sea or air?) and whether it is close or far, nearing or leaving, so as to tell the rest of the troop how to react. Infants must learn what each of these more particular calls means, but they have time to do so, as until they are around eight months old, they can rely on their mother to react for them and pull them away from any dangers.

~~~

Mowtzins are the biggest hothouse mowerbirds, most species growing to weights of 2 - 4 lbs (giant relative to their sparrow-like kin) with some even larger outliers. They are sometimes seen foraging with monkcats, the two being aided in spotting danger by the multiplied eyes and ears they have when together. It helps that the food resources they each prefer do not largely overlap. Descended from the horned mowerbird and endemic only to the Trilliontree Islands, they now comprise a genus of around 20 very brightly colored, folivorous birds that are adapted to eat tree leaves, rather than grass shoots and ground vegetation like other mowerbirds, and unlike the fruits and seeds taken by the monkcats. They live in the very tops of forest trees, and are selective feeders, using their large, serrated beaks are used to clip the last few inches of growing tree branches, therefore taking advantage of only the softest, tender new growth. This feeding behavior, multiplied by many mowtzins, directly influences the growth patterns of local tree canopies, making them especially dense, while also reducing their leaf size. Each stem pruned by a mowtzin produces 2 or more secondary branches in response to the cut, redirecting energy which would go into a single large stalk into several smaller ones. Beyond the browsing height of giant skuorc species, mowtzins are the Trilliontree's primary browsers, and occur in extreme abundance.

These birds can reach larger sizes than grassland mowerbirds because they do not need to fly well to escape aerial enemies that ambush them near roosts. This has allowed them to become more specialized, efficient feeders, with a big enough gut to to digest a diet that is not very nutritious via fermenting gut bacteria. Unlike other mowerbirds, mowtzins can take most of the nutrition from their food, and food passes through their systems very slowly, taking up to 2 days to be digested, versus one hour for their ancestral species. They eat less, and can gain more from what they do consume. Their metabolic rate is slower than in other sparrowgulls, and they may spend up to 16 hours a day resting quietly, hidden in thick leaf cover by their primarily green feathers, as they digest. Feeding is done mostly in morning and evening hours, and is facilitated by a unique locomotion: wing-assisted climbing. Mowtzins have evolved elongated "thumbs" from their alulas (thumb digits) which are mobile and can form a pincer grip against a second fused digit of the wrist. This anatomy is similar, but convergent to, the related but far bigger carriageoose, which uses its wings to carry its eggs. Mowtzins use their "pincers" to hold tree branches, even hanging their body weight upon them as they browse, as well as to pick leaves off higher shoots and bring them down to the beak. Though capable of flight, mowtzins have a small breastbone and fly weakly and slowly, rarely flying more than 100 feet horizontally, and with little power of ascent. Their wings are most useful to catch their frequent clumsy falls, and glide them to safety back at the trunk of the tree. If it finds itself on the ground, a mowtzin will climb back up with both arms and legs, rather than try to fly back to safety. Though they fly poorly, mowtzins can cross narrow waterways separating islands via flight, and surprisingly, are fat and buoyant enough to swim for as far as a mile (and may sometimes find themselves forced to, as frequent storms often break branches off of their tree homes, plummeting them down to often-flooded ground below.) Many different species have diverged as populations became cut off from each other in this way; as the islands change shape and size over time due to erosion and the growth of mangroves, some species then meet again and compete.

Though they are very social and usually live in large groups for safety from predators - mostly flying birds - mowtzins are also aggressive and territorial. The sexes are quite different; though females of all are similar and mainly green, the males differ in plumage considerably, with additional feather patterns in red, purple and orange and often elongated display plumes on the had and sometimes the rump. Males are up to 50% larger than females, and single males defend flocks of 5 to 15 females from rival males, each territory generally being confined to a single large tree canopy or several smaller adjacent ones. Males frequently call and flash their feather ornaments at one another from their close-set territories, telling each other to stay in their place. The streamertail mowtzin is one of the most decorated species and possibly also the most cantankerous. The male of this species has two very long head plumes ending in iridescent round feathers, and two even longer, pointed tail quills that they flick around expressively when displaying. Taking frequent breaks from feeding to jump around at the edge of the tree and threaten neighboring males with barking calls, sometimes a male tries his luck and challenges a harem male to a fight. Males of this mowerbird which find themselves equally matched may fight to the death. The winner takes control of the group and mates with all of the hens and, if present, destroys all of the former leader's eggs and young nestlings. Male mowtzins of different species will also fight, as they compete for the same diets, and similar-looking females may be herded into the harems of other kinds of males, resulting in relatively common hybridization. So territorial are these birds that some species, especially the streamertail, may even go out of their way to kill much more distantly related mowerbirds and even totally unrelated birds with similar colors if they intrude too closely to their harems. With such specialized stomachs, mowtzins are more poorly suited to eat any sort of animal food than other mowerbirds, and the males don't eat what they kill, instead carrying it and tossing it far off the edge of the canopy so as not to draw in scavengers. 

 Females nest in the home trees of their mate, making large but simple cup-shaped nests of twigs and green leaves, lined with feathers plucked from their own breasts. A single lightly speckled egg is incubated and once hatched the altricial chick is raised by the mother alone, though the male will attack would-be predators at and around the nest site. Chicks are exclusively fed fermented plant material regurgitated from the mother's stomach until almost 2 months old; this food is already broken down to its most nutritious components, which allows the chick to grow quickly without the need to spend time on the very prolonged digestion process required for fresh leaves. The chick is not fully weaned until six months of age, roughly 4 times as long as the time of related plains mowerbirds. This is possible because mowtzins have few significant predators; males are good defenders, their habitat is far above the ground and out of reach, and perhaps most significantly, mowtzins smell and taste awful due to their diet, which gives them an off-putting manure-like odor few animals will tolerate. 

~~~

The paradise ptern is another very common bird in the trilliontrees, but uncommon outside the archipelago, as the entire species breeds in a single colony on the island of Eden. Though they are seabirds, they are notably reliant on freshwater to drink on a daily basis, preventing their spread far across open oceans. This is because the paradise ptern is not a sparrowgull, a hellican, or an aukvulture, groups with specializations to drink seawater. This bird is, in fact, a ptoose, evolved over the last ten million years from the small, flocking passager ptoose. Once an inland grazer, with a diet focused heavily on seeds, the paradise ptern reflects how different breeding groups of that ancestral species, focused each on a single breeding site and so becoming reproductively isolated, could change radically over time.

Paradise pterns evolved to forage near the ocean, first on seaweed and associated small invertebrates washed onto the sand by the surf, and later to catching small fish from the water's surface. Today, they feed only in or near water. Yet these seabirds retain many relics of their land-bird ancestry. In addition to being unable to remove salt from seawater, they are poor swimmers with unwebbed feet; they can only float on the surface of water to rest, unable to dive or swim at all, and usually snatch fish from just inches below the surface. Individuals are highly adapted to sustained flight, with very long fore- and hind-wings used for soaring flight and which permit sleeping whilst in the air, and only a single wing finger, for they rarely walk on the ground. The hind-wing plumage functions as a tail to steer and direct flight, and the outer feathers are especially long and streamer-like, especially in the adult male but to a smaller extent in the female and juvenile. These elongated feathers are attractive to mates, but also serve as predator defenses, as they are very large targets that easily pluck out without severely affecting the stability of the rest of the tail, allowing them to escape aerial enemies. The tail is strongly forked, an adaptation to reduce drag to compensate for these lengthy outer plumes.

Paradise pterns molt twice annually. For most of the year they are unremarkable birds with grey and brown feathers over their entire bodies, save for some small white speckles and tips to their flight feathers. This plumage is plain, and allows the birds to fly without being easily seen in low light conditions, especially in early night and early dawn hours when they do most of their feeding by swooping down and catching small baitfish as they rise from the ocean depths to catch plankton in the dark. But just before the nesting season, when all of the widely-spread flocks will converge onto a single sky island summit to nest, the whole population undergoes a dramatic change of wardrobe. In five weeks, the dull body plumes shed and are replaced with brilliant red and gold feathers; only the wing feathers are left in place, for they are so large as to be too energetically expensive to drop more than once per year, and so they remain dark even in breeding condition. Both male and female shift into this red garb for the breeding season, a signal of their health and fitness; birds which have fed less or been ill will not molt into as bright a color, or may even turn a sickly off-white color, indicative of a diet lacking in carotenoids. Pairs form annually after synchronized courtship flights in which hundreds of birds will fly in a nearly straight line, with couples gradually breaking away and testing one another's agility in spiraling downward flights in tandem. Pairs cooperatively brood a clutch of two to six pupa and both assist in caring for the young, which can fly shortly after hatching but remain in creches at the nest site until a month of age, when they are agile enough to join the adults on the ocean to find their own food. Adults begin to lose their red color about two weeks after their young fledge, returning to fully gray in another six weeks. Chicks will turn red within just 8 months of their fledging and may breed thereafter, though most will not successfully reproduce until their second season.

The paradise ptern's voice is a melodious, rising chirp. During courtship, both sexes will emit a short, sweet song of rapidly rising notes, harmonizing their calls over the course of their flight.

~~~

In the trilliontrees, birds are joined by abundant types of tribbats. Indeed, the heaviest flying tribbat of all lives not out on the open seas nor in the longdark swamp, but here in the trilliontrees. Male sundancers - but not females - regularly stand five feet high with wings eight feet wide, and weigh up to 60 pounds. They are descended from one offshoot of the spook of the south pole - a species which still exists - and so they still share most of their genes. But different habitats have shaped the two populations of the late hothouse into remarkably dissimilar animals. There is no longdark winter in the trilliontrees, so there is no melanistic variant of this species. Unlike the ancestral spook, the sundancer is now colorful, diurnal, and strongly social. Males and females have evolved toward very different niches from one another, in order to reduce competition between them while allowing for the formation of a highly complex social structure. They are now the most social of all the moonbeasts.

The male sundancer is a slow flier, with broad wings. He is weighed down by muscle, as well as by his long, thick fur, which makes him seem even bigger than he truly is. His role in the pack is simple and well-defined. He is a protector, and his vibrant golden pelage a signal of his power to other males, and a beacon of fitness to appeal to potential mates. His flight is inefficient and laborious, and his tail fan is exaggeratedly large and deeply forked, and yet in a descending glide he fans his tail and produces a breathtaking show as he careens quickly downward in a spiral to a new perch, from which he will climb back up again; perhaps to meet an impressed partner. He needs not to fly quickly, or even well, but only to be capable of defending his mates and his offspring from all threats, both within his own species - other males will kill them to take over his pack - and from other species that will prey upon them. And he needs to look good doing it. He is thus a beast built for strength and for show. And so under his flowing hair, he is built like a brick house, and beneath his golden fur he is positively ripped. Opposing males grapple, pushing their rivals out of the tops of trees - often after biting fierce wounds through their wings to reduce their ability to catch their falls. The oldest, most enduring males in a clan may ultimately be virtually flightless from wing injuries. It does not affect their fitness as long as they can keep other males at bay, because male sundancers don't have to hunt. That is taken care of by their mates.

The female sundancer is a small, subdued animal with a camouflaged pelage of tawny-green rosettes. She weighs just 15 to 20 lbs, and her wings are longer and more narrow, to fly quickly through the forest and turn on a dime. She is a thin and agile animal, not at all built for conflict, and she shies away from danger, choosing flight over fight. But her speed and athletic build make her a highly accurate hunter, and she ambushes birds and molodonts and all other manner of smaller animals with swift, fatal attacks from above, killing her quarry in the death grip of her hind talons. Singly, they are formidable. But the female sundancer is gregarious. They are the foundation of the pack, and they always hunt as a collective. Together, they are deadly. Three to ten females work together in relays to run down faster birds that could outfly just one of them, or to surprise and corner fleeing arboreal animals which could outmaneuver a single pursuer. They feed themselves first; the male is nowhere around, so they take advantage of the choicest portions of each kill as their payment for their service before ferrying home the rest of the meal to pay his tribute for his services as guardian - and to feed their young. Being so large, the male requires several times more food each day than any one of the hunters, and he monopolizes most of the carcasses taken back to the den site at the summit of a sky island in which the pack roosts, and which the male guards. But in return for his service, the females gain protection for their offspring. It is the male, after all, that supervises their kits as they hunt, defending them from all the forests' dangers. As he feeds greedily on the females' delivered morsels, they regurgitate part of what they consumed earlier to nourish their young, demonstrating that their seemingly selfish habit of eating the best bits first is in fact to ensure their young get the most nutrition they can.

Where food is very plentiful, or where available prey trends toward larger sizes, sundancer packs will be larger than where food is scarce or comprised only of small morsels. At least three females must work to feed a single male, but a male can protect up to six or seven mates well on his own. Sometimes even larger clans will form based on pairs of males, always brothers, which remain together after dispersing as juveniles and court a harem together. These pairs have the benefit of being highly effective protectors, able to swiftly outfight nearly any single opponent. But the trade-off is requiring twice as much food, and such a luxury is only available to sundancers living in the most productive territories of the islands, particularly along the larger waterways that cut between the forest, where they may add marine life and carrion to their usual diet of forest prey. Just as males fed off other males, except sometimes for a single other bonded sibling, females in a large pack are hostile to outsider females and defend their own hunting territories from rival packs. Yet these moonbeasts are not blind slaves to their instincts - they can reason, and they know that their survival depends on balancing on a group large enough to hunt and defend, but not so big that they run into issues of scarcity. If a group dwindles to just three or four, they will become more tolerant of rivals, and submissive single females may be accepted into the pack, albeit at the bottom of the hierarchy. If a pack is decimated through predation or disease, one or two survivors will be forced to leave their male and attempt to integrate into a larger, more sustainable rival group; if their male is fit and strong, he is likely to quickly build a new harem as others disperse from their packs at adolescence; sometimes, larger roving groups of females will take over a pack and drive away the resident females if they outnumber them. Just as would males, these usurpers will kill the young of their rivals. 

If a male becomes injured, or simply becomes too aged, he is likely to be displaced by a challenger. Even if he is not, his mates will not care for him if he cannot in turn protect their offspring and ensure the survival of their genes, and they will abandon him to fate. Fully grown males left without female company for more than a short time are highly disadvantaged at survival, having little means to feed themselves, and most will soon succumb. It is the unfortunate trade-off for the specializing so strongly toward traits that improve their attractiveness to the opposite sex, at the expense of their own survival. The female, conversely, can survive on her own reasonably well, even if isolated from her hunting party - she can and does early in life, after she disperses from her parents but before she joins a new pack, and so too does the juvenile male, who resembles the female and can feed himself, and who will not complete his maturation into a full-sized adult until there is an opening in the region; namely, the death of a local resident harem leader. The transformation into a full adult, while not a conscious choice, is a one-way road. Once fully grown, the male will no longer be able to survive on his own. His maturity is thus delayed from that of the female, to better his odds of finding a suitable harem to take-over, or an unclaimed territory in which to build a new family of his own.

Even the female cannot truly complete her life cycle without her mate. Her parental instincts are severely compromised, and she will rarely if ever risk her own life to protect her young, so that without a male attendant, she will have very low odds of rearing any young to maturity. The sundancer species requires both sexes to work in tandem to get through all the aspects of life - they cannot do it all on their own.

~~~

Most tribbats of the trilliontrees are small, not huge. Treedemons are a subgenus of the fan-crested seademons (a large group of tribbfishers which are mostly categorized under the large genus Flabellotis, totaling around 35 species which are nearly all oceanic.) All five species in this sub-clade are endemic only to the trilliontree islands, and diverged from the other fan-crested seademons 2.5 million years ago. They share most traits in common with others of their genus, most apparent being their very large, colorful ears which can be folded and extended as a display structure in the male. They are comparatively tiny, within the size range of gulls and weighing only a couple of pounds, but the head is proportionally large, especially the robust semi-extensible jaws. They differ markedly in their feet, as treedemons are uniquely adapted to perch. Other seademons walk on a single hoof-like digit - which is well-suited to standing on rocky shores - but in treedemons the hoof is secondary in importance to the normally small thumb claw that here is massive and used to grasp tree branches. Two of the treedemon species still feed out at sea, hunting small fish and snarks from near the surface, and they only use forest trees near the ocean to roost and nest. The clambering treedemon, though, is the most specialized. With the largest claws of all, it is an inland, forest hunter, one of only two in the entire seademon family (the other being the boggart of Zarreland.) 

It fills a niche more like a rhynchodon aukvulture than a tribbfisher, with a diet of roughly 50% flying vertebrates including sparrowgulls and smaller tribbats, 30% flightless vertebrates like molodonts and skuzzards, and 20% arthropods, especially tree crabs but also millipedes, beetles, and flying mites. Fish is an insignificant dietary component, and rather than feed on the water, the clambering treedemon scurries along tall tree trunks, darting from branch to branch with short, fluttering flight to snatch fast-moving prey in its jaws. It is a relatively weak flier, and rarely crosses distances of more than a few thousand feet - just enough to facilitate travel from one island to another nearby. It prefers to travel through the branches, where it can not only run over the tops of them with its claws angled inwards to secure a grip, but also travel by climbing upside down. Very rare for any living tribbat, the clambering treedemon typically sleeps suspended in this way, able to drop into flight at a moment's notice if threatened during the night.

The male clambering treedemon is a strikingly beautiful animal, tawny brown with a white head, black throat, red-orange ears and blue jaws. Its tail is deeply forked, as are its ears, in seademon style. The female is more subtle but no less pleasing, sharing the male's fur patterns if not his bright accent colors, though her throat is fully white. Most of the year they are solitary animals, roosting singly in high canopy branches, but during the mating season males gather in leks, hundreds of them, and display competitively as the females come and go, taking their pick of the options all laid out neatly before them. The males hang upside down by their wing claws, flap their wings, flare their ears, and inflate their dark throat pouch, producing loud honking calls which collectively become a deafening roar. Each male takes no part in child raising at all, not even in protecting the pups; the harem-forming, beach-guarding behavior of other seademons has been heavily modified into a system where males compete closely together in a single gathering place, but the females then disperse to raise their young alone, due to the very different habitat choice of this species. Females create a small nest in a high thicket from moss, vines, and the fur or feathers of their prey and there hide a single infant for its first several weeks; it grows quickly and soon can climb independently in the branches, but it will take several months to fly. 

The arboreal habits of the treedemons likely arose directly as a result of predation by big, carnivorous seabirds, which cannot access them in the heights of the forest trees. Without large, conspicuous coastal nesting colonies, the treedemons can avoid attracting unwanted attention to their island homes. And this is a very good thing, because the larger seabirds that patrol the edges of the Trilliontrees are bad news for all they come across.

The tyrant barongull is the the heaviest volant sparrowgull in the world by 290 MPE, reaching an astonishing weight of 125 pounds, which very few bipedal flying birds have ever reached in Serina's long history (quadrupedal birds, able to launch into the air using their wing muscles on solid ground, have a much higher weight threshold.) Though still capable of strong and prolonged flight, their size limits their ability to take flight from the ground, which has had interesting consequences on their lifestyle.

Native to the outlying Trilliontree Islands with wide expanses of seashore, tyrant barongulls are much more terrestrial than their predecessors, the royal villaingulls, with relatively long and sturdy legs, and only partially webbed toes. They often feed on the ground, killing anything they can overpower with a blows from a deadly beak larger than a human head. Both sexes are a dark, iridescent blood red color with white eye markings, flanks, and wing spots, though can appear black in low light and blue-green from certain low angles. Males have a series of four to seven raised scutes on the upper bill surface, which grow slowly throughout life and signify age and fitness to both females and other males. A social though aggressive bird, tyrant barongulls live in packs of anywhere from two to more than ten adults, depending on food availability. Groups have a strong hierarchy, with a dominant male and female at the top, and juveniles near the bottom.

These huge sparrowgulls are formidable predators singly, and deadly in numbers. Their most favored prey of all are nestlings of colonial seabirds and tribbfishers. No longer strongly nomadic over the open ocean, tribbfishers no longer lead them to food supplies. Now, they have become the food. Flocks in flight ascend like bandits from the sky, striking the colony in force. Their huge wingspans, up to 14 feet across, cast great shadows on the shores as they land, and they shriek and snap their jaws to frighten and scatter the adults so that the hunters may skulk through gobbling up the helpless young until the adults can mass back together, using their larger numbers, and at last drive away the invaders as a cooperative force. But once landed, the barongulls are quite reluctant to leave a new island. They hunt more readily on land than any other villaingull species, and even once their initial onslaught has been halted, they remain around the fringes of the colony, picking off any unattended or weak young, and the occasional adult. Other flocks of barongulls, attracted by the commotion, come to settle too; soon, many packs have joined the fray, bickering fiercely with each other as their prey grows ever wearier. If the pressure becomes too much, entire colonies will abandon their nestlings, and then the swarm of barongulls brutally take out all of the young left behind, fighting one another over every morsel. Their feeding technique seems unsustainable; scaring away a colony may produce one huge glut of food, but it comes at the expense of future food security, for tribbfishers may not return to a dangerous beach ever again. But this is not a big deal to the barongull - it's lifestyle is one of smashing and grabbing, exploiting and then moving on to another resource. These tyrants are pirates in every sense of the word. 

The tyrant barongull is adapted to strip small islands of all food, then move on. When the nesting tribbfishers are gone, they move inland and see what else can be found. Here their prey ranges from all sorts of smaller birds, murds, and molodonts up to land vertebrates as large as loopalopes. They will even enter the forest in pursuit of quarry, folding their long wings tightly against their bodies to avoid catching them on a branch, though they are not adept at navigating thick foliage and will not penetrate deep into the jungles of larger islands. When land-based food sources seem abundant enough to support them over a longer timespan, the largest and most dominant tyrant barongulls may become territorial. They drive off all smaller competitors, save for a mate or two, and become sedentary and cease to fly much, if at all. But the real key to the tyrant's successful dominion over most of the archipelago is their versatility. When one island has been depleted of its most easily captured and accessible prey, tyrant barongulls have a great advantage over flightless birds and other predators in their size range. They can leave. Taking flight is difficult for them, so that they only do so when they must. They must enter deep water to do so, where they can launch upwards using their wings without damaging them - a biological cheat code, allowing them to use the power of their forearms to get lift off similarly to how quadrupedal birds can do so on solid ground. And to do so is risky - many marine predators lurk the coastal waters of these islands, so to decide to fly is a decision not to take lightly. But once airborne, they can fly for many days without landing. They enter a migratory stage, which lasts until they can find another lasting food source; a new island, rife for the picking. Their next home may be hundreds of miles away, and they will pass over many others before deciding on a new place to land, judging each one on the likelihood of supporting enough food to make the stop worthwhile - if it has little to eat, they will find themselves swimming out to sea and taking flight again too soon, risking life and limb each time. Further, it must lack larger endemic predators that could threaten the barongull. Each time a flock of these tyrants passes overhead, all smaller animals go quiet with fright. Will this be the day the raiders come down and come for them, too? But with so many islands in the archipelago - many thousands of them - the chance is never too high that the predators will select any particular one among the many.

It's a small consolation for any unfortunate creature when they do choose their island to settle, though. For the many separated ecosystems of this biome, each apart from its neighboring island, has allowed the tyrant barongull to evolve almost outside of typical checks and balances. Few other predators have the means and motivation to reduce their habitat to scorched earth devoid of all food, for few can then just fly away and find a new land to conquer as soon as they do so. In their aggressive, destructive colonization of new lands for short-term gain, tyrant barongulls could be said to be among the most human like of Serinan animals.

The isolation of so many of the Trilliontree's islands means each one can often become an ecosystem in and of itself. This means that there are an unusually large number of predator species on the archipelago, more than could exist if each one shared land with the others. And the variety they come in is unparalleled in the hothouse world. Some are not highly divergent from mainland relatives, but others, without competitors to prevent them edging into unconventional niches, hail from unexpected ancestors. 

~~~

The trilliontree islands are part of the Serinarctan continental plate, but their relative isolation and proximity to the southern hemisphere and Serinaustran landmass means that these islands support a mixture of northern and southern lineages, forming an eco-region of their own. Several southern animal groups, otherwise absent or very rare further north, have managed to establish populations here, especially on the southernmost and thus most distant of the islands. Among them are the kaks, scansorial scroungers otherwise limited to Serinaustra. Save for a single mainland species - the castacrane - the endemic kaks of the trilliontrees are Serinarcta's only native scroungers. All of them are most closely related to the moundcracker kak, and descend from a recent ancestor of this species within 5 million years which presumably rafted overseas on large aggregations of trees washed out to sea by a hurricane event. Rafting has become more common in the late hothouse, as sea levels have gradually lowered over the past 20 million years - the subtle beginning of big changes soon to come to the climate.

Islands are a fascinating kind of environment, and often operate as a sort of living laboratory where animal life can evolve in ways not possible in the busier ecology of mainland ecosystems. While kaks here have not had a very long time to transition drastically away from their ancestral forms, one species in particular has changed substantially by growing far bigger than any other, and by using that larger size and strength to adopt a richer diet of meat. Endemic to just two islands in the southern Trilliontrees, separated from any other by over 90 miles, the kakraptor has become an unlikely apex predator, living in a place with no larger land-dwelling carnivore to prevent its expansion into raptorial roles.

The kakraptor is almost entirely carnivorous, and spends nearly its entire life on the ground. Meat-eating, terrestrial kaks are not unheard of, and there are species of this niche on Serinaustra too. But none, anywhere, approaches the kakraptor's size: adults stand up to 4.5 feet high and can weigh 90 lbs. While not a fast runner like the hawk-billed kak, kakraptors are much more powerful. They hunt prey at the margins of jungle and beach, ambushing prey that includes dwarf gantuans and huge molodonts, other wayward travelers over seas which have been resized by the constraints and opportunities of island living. This hunter is the closest thing any rhyncheirid bird has come to the extinct grapplers of the mid-Ultimocene since their extinction in the last ice age; prey is taken down with forceful grasping of four powerful, muscular tentacles, each supported by bony struts, all radiating around a slicing beak. The two hind toes of the kakraptor are held up from the ground, and so the talon on each has become wickedly curved without the ground to blunt it; this predator uses it as an additional anchor to hold onto struggling victims as it leaps onto their backs and attacks the head and throat, ultimately forcing them to their knees with its weight. Its only competitors for food are passing fliers, seraphs like hellicans and aukvultures and the occasional seademon. Of these, none venture regularly into the thickets of the island, and indeed the kakraptor is primed to exploit the arrival of other predators, for they chase prey from the shores into the cover of the jungle where it lies in wait to catch them.

Without enemies of its own to fear in the forests of their habitat, the kakraptor doesn't roost in trees. Egg-laying, too, occurs right on the ground, in a simple scrape in the leaf litter or rarely in a shallow bowl-shaped depression dug into the side of a slope. Both sexes provide parental care for a single chick for up to two years. Hunting is usually a solitary process, and though pairs are long-lasting, they interact infrequently and have limited social bonding. Yet the kakraptor is not always a lone hunter, for as the most formidable predator of their small and insular home, smaller scavengers may associate themselves with it, following at a distance and taking advantage of any scraps it leaves behind. Why the kakraptor tolerates these other animals, which most often include a small, mysterious sort of winged skungaru, is initially unclear. There is evidence that indicates these smaller, gregarious animals, though unable to hunt big game on their own, may aid the kakraptor in locating and capturing food by acting as unassuming spies within groups of prey animals and even manipulating their behavior through false alarm calls to leave them vulnerable to attack. For these reasons, the kakraptor will usually permit its small entourage to feed on its leavings unbothered, and so the symbiotic relationship is perpetuated.

~~~

The trilliontrees are home to many predators, large and small - but one of the smaller ones you can readily find on many of these islands is very closely related to some of the biggest land predators off the islands. The little devil is a miniature member of the "devil" genus of vultrorcs. Faced with novel competition for larger prey, the ancestors of this species - most closely related to the red and blue devils - became far littler than they were on the continent. It is a neotenic species, its physical growth stunted at a juvenile stage for life, even as it reaches sexual maturity. Vultrorcs, particularly devils, are precocious from the very start and need no parental care. Born a miniature of the adult, it was only a matter of hormonal changes to result in a permanently puny animal. Little devils have a natural deficiency of growth hormone and only grow for the first year of their lives rather than indefinitely, thus preventing them from over-exploiting limited food sources on the smaller islands of the archipelago. A fully adult little devil weighs just sixty pounds: about as much as a 2 month old red devil, which will grow to 5,000 pounds within ten years.

Besides their diminutive stature, little devils do not greatly diverge from their relatives in shape. Their beaks are still very large relative to their skulls, and they deliver a powerful bite; a single individual can bring down prey its own size with little difficulty. They retain the thagomizer tail of their clade, though its defensive spines are reduced comparatively, for this animal is lighter and thus more reliant on speed than defense even in adulthood. The little devil is a barrel-chested animal with slender legs - a shape that suits running through the foliage of the forest undergrowth, to push their way through brambles and yet step lightly through the branches lying close to the ground so as not to get caught up. The horns on its brows are straight, slightly back-swept and fairly blunt; they are used to scratch tree bark and deposit scent marks from tear glands at the front of their eyes.

The little devil's diet is its most different aspect when compared to the other devils. Unlike them, it is an omnivore, its limited resources here having required it broaden its food preferences. Little devils consume half their calories from the plant kingdom; their keen sense of smell guides them to where trees have dropped fruit, and they especially favor the rotten ones once insects have colonized them; occasionally, they will become drunk on fermented fruit and become stupid and vulnerable to larger predators, running in the open unaware of their surroundings and picking fights well outside their size class. Their heavy bills are used not just to break bones, but as mallets to crush larger fruits and nuts and as shovels to dig up tubers from the ground. While generally solitary and not known to cooperatively hunt animal prey, adult little devils will frequently congregate around fruiting trees; they will scuffle with one another, but are far more tolerant of company than any other devil, if only among peers of similar size. Juveniles are fair game to adults which are eager cannibals; the very young stick to the thickets and densest tangles of vines where larger specimens can't outrun them, only daring venture into the open once almost fully grown. Because of their partially vegetarian diet and smaller size, this devil has a high population on the islands and is, perhaps surprisingly, a relatively common item in the diet of other predators for this reason, especially when young. Females begin reproducing at a year of age and may bear two to three litters of up to six young annually, most of which do not reach adulthood. Young, unusually, are less tolerant of their peers than adults and even more likely to cannibalize. Their growth is dependent on food intake, and can be slowed on a poorer diet, so that even siblings of the same litter may grow at very different rates - a bad thing for the weaker, for they will consume the runts if they can catch them even when the size difference is as little as 20% of their weight. It's a hard life for most little devils, whose trade off for such abundance has been very high mortality at all life stages; the much bigger red devil, in contrast, has hardly any mortality once several years of age. But little devils never quite grow up, and as such, they never fully escape the dangerous world that most skuorcs face in their infancy - one in which life is riddled with deadly hazards, and it truly is everyone for themselves, perhaps the embodiment of the hothouse's harshest aspects.

The ravenator is a widespread apex predator of several large islands in the Trilliontree archipelago, though it also exists on islands where it is dwarfed by even larger species, and there adopts a more cryptic and elusive habit. A skuorc growing up to ten feet long, though this large-beaked carnivore resembles the griffons of Serinaustra, it is not immediately related. The ravenator is a petratel, a link between the vultorcs which include both the dog-like drackals and the devils, and the more bear-like varc. Adapted to a jungle island habitat, it has acquired several more cat-like traits compared to its nearest relatives including more flexible shoulders and wrists, used more by the juveniles than the adult to take shelter in forest trees. The grown ravenator has no enemies, save for other ravenators, and can hunt prey up to three times its own weight (of up to 400 pounds) by grappling them down off their feet with its hooked forearm claws, then ripping out their throats with its huge jaws. But though a capable ambush predator, the ravenator is quite lazy, and is a preferential scavenger. Like most skuorcs, it can go a long time between meals, and is further able to store fat in its tail, so that it feeds rarely more than once every ten days. It is well-adapted to take advantage of carrion windfalls, especially beached marine life, and can consume nearly 200 pounds in a sitting until its stomach is quite grossly distended, and may even drag along the ground. Unless it has no easier option, it is more likely to be seen prowling along the seashores which ring its islands, usually by night, and gobbling up any and every dead thing it comes across. Though it sometimes gobbles up young of the related little devil, the adult is usually too quick for it to catch. Its sight is much poorer than its sense of smell, so that though near-sighted it can hone in on food anywhere it may land, and it will swim to reach a new source of food, sometimes for up to ten miles (occasional, dispersing sea crossings in excess of 20 miles are not unknown, which has allowed this predator to acquire a wide range.)

Though primarily a carnivore, the ravenator can and does consume fruit as well as certain seaweeds, especially those which have been scented by close proximity to a carcass. Its strong beak is able to make short work of bone and also to open mollusc shells, which it may even dig out of the sand in shallow water during periods of low tide. Though only an infrequent hunter of healthy, large prey, it will sometimes follow ill or wounded animals and wait for them to be weak enough to start eating them from the backside without making any effort to kill them, and likewise it will trail heavily pregnant gantuans or skulossi in order to devour large numbers of their precocial young as soon as they are born. These feeding habits may seem cowardly, but they are simply energetically efficient ways to find food in an environment where it is not always consistently available, as most herbivores of these islands are either too big to hunt, or small and arboreal, and thus only accessible as prey when the ravenator is very young. Once grown, it is too big and ungainly to climb trees.

A solitary animal, ravenators do not interact except aggressively with one another except during brief periods of female receptivity. Males control larger home ranges than females, and ideally will overlap with several females; the two sexes are tolerant of each other, though only tolerant - they do not share food, and will chase the other away if they come close. Some males' ranges, however, may cover entire islands in order to provide them enough to eat. Such males have all the food they might want with little competition, but must leave their ranges and swim to islands housing females, sometimes at the risk of meeting another rival male already present. Females ready to mate roar loudly while standing on beaches, with their voices rivaling the roar of the sea itself; they also release strong-smelling pheromones which males can detect, and these cues draw in males from widely around. Males will kill each other in order to mate, especially an intruding male entering another's territory, and most adult males are heavily scarred. Females give birth to two to six offspring after a six month gestation, entering the depths of the jungle to do so, in order to give their young the best chance at survival. Hormone changes diminish a female's appetite for up to five days after the birth, protecting her young from cannibalism until they can find a safe place to hide in the treetops, where they remain for their first year of life hunting mainly birds.

Ravenators are important to the stability of their insular habitats as adults, as they patrol the shorelines, can completely exclude barongulls from landing on their islands, protecting smaller animals from their intense predation. And in this ability to protect the lands they live on, they are not alone.

~~~

The largest flying predator endemic to the Trilliontrees is their own representative giant aukvulture, the wyverubim, the male of which is unmistakable for its beak crest, colored red and gold like a flame, and gradually cracking and becoming jagged with age so as to increase the visual effect. With a wingspan of up to 30 feet and a weight of several hundred pounds, this descendant of the southern wyvulture, a southern aukvulture clade which has now moved north, requires substantial food in the form of flesh and blood creatures, and as a sedentary species that flies only reluctantly and prefers to stalk its prey on the ground, it rarely visits any but the largest islands in the archipelago. The highest concentration of these hunters is found on Eden, where they frequently scavenge on the cygnosaur kills of subjugators. Wyverubims have only small hind legs, yet run habitually on them so as to spread their wings and appear far larger than they really are - a group of such posturing predators can even cause a subjugator to back off long enough for the thieves to steal a mouthful of meat. As long as food is not scarce, this aukvulture is gregarious, and rarely occurs singly.

In addition to scavenging, the wyverubim will feed on living animals, though contrary to its fearsome jaws and bold temperament, it is not an especially efficient predator and rarely goes to great lengths to catch anything that is not already weakened, as carrion is usually available somewhere, and always an easier thing to get. Not adapted to hunt on the wing, and too large and ungainly to easily move through the thick vegetation of most of the island to chase the smaller things that hide there, they most often gather along beaches and take slow flapping flights low over the island, following a keen sense of smell to wherever dead things may be found. Much of their diet is marine in origin, as storms wash in the bodies of great aquatic life from far away, which the flocks quickly pick clean.

 Among live prey, they most often target those which can't run away from them as they stalk around at the edge of the forest, on the beach and on small near-shore islets. Seabird and tribbfisher chicks, defenseless young cygnosaurs, unwary handelopes, and loopalope calves let unattended in tall grass while their mothers are out grazing are all fair game. Yet overall the wyverubim is not a highly influential predator pressure on these islands - and in fact, its presence here directly correlates with an increase in biodiversity of species as well as survival of individual prey animals, because like the ravenator, one thing the wyverubim does do very well is drive off competing scavengers, including tyrant barongulls, which are ruthlessly effective predators that can strip an island clean of all prey animals on smaller, more isolated regions of the trilliontrees where nothing exists to combat them. Territorial over their food supply, much larger wyverubims don't give these sinister sparrowgulls any chance to settle upon their islands. Taking full advantage of their greater size and the inability of the barongull to take flight on dry land, if they ever come across one on the ground, they will brutally tear it limb from limb. In doing so, this predator effectively guards its island home from invaders which would disrupt their delicately interwoven food chain, and so protects Eden's fragile ecosystem, allowing a wider diversity of small animal species to live here than on any other island in the chain.

~~~

Not all drakevultures are ferocious beasts. Some are gentle, gregarious creatures as radiant as the sun. Wyvengos are a species of wyvulture known for their vibrant shimmering plumage that at times appears red, at others blue. Their multicolored feathers are each pigmented with red carotenoids, while at the same time supporting melanin pigments which refract light, rendering them an iridescent blue, though only when the light hits them at the right angle. Wyvengos know how to angle their feathers to catch the sun's rays, transforming themselves from one color to another in an instant to beguile a mate. When threatened, a whole flock will flash their feathers to produce a dazzling anti-predator effect which makes it very difficult for enemies to single out a target. The beak casque of the wyvengo is unusual, derived into a thin, flexible rod on top of its head which is present in both sexes and may serve function in social communication, as birds often tap them together during greeting.

A native of the island's brackish salt marshes and abundant wetlands, the wyvengo has abandoned the active hunting of its ancestors as it adapted to catch fish instead of land vertebrates. Now it feeds by wading upon very small organisms including crustaceans, algae, and fish fry. Their diet is high in the red pigment that is stored in their feathers  - occasional mutations occur which render individuals a slate blue-grey color, and such birds are unable to flash different colors as they don't metabolize carotene from their diet into their plumes. The wyvengo's beak is deeply serrated, but each "tooth' is extremely fine, like a comb. The bird feeds by stirring the sandy sediment with its feet, then lowering its head and angling its beak at a 45 degree angle upside down, collecting water and debris together before straining out the particles of food.

A diet of such small food has let the wyvengo lose its territorial nature and flock for safety, for there is so much of its food that no competition exists between individuals for a meal. Now an extremely social bird, the wyvengo can occur in flocks of hundreds of thousands. They are migratory but not predictably so, favoring warm and saline waters where their food is most abundant, along seaside beaches and inland estuaries, inland as far south as the great salt lake, and occasionally as far north as the trilliontree islands. Flocks lift off and disappear when their food reaches too low a concentration in the water to sift it out effectively, traveling up to 1000 miles to a new feeding ground with a mysterious sense of coordination. They reproduce just as irregularly, mating when food is abundant but never more than once every two years. Pairs are monogamous throughout long lives, and up to ten chicks are brooded and pupate in communal nesting grounds on mudflats. Once chicks can walk, within three days of metamorphosis, they are led by their parents into creches and then collectively herded by the flock to new feeding areas each day. All adults actively defend the young from predators, and alternate roles caretaking and feeding themselves. Flight is delayed in the chicks relative to most archangels, and they only develop flight feathers around 3 weeks of age. If conditions shift suddenly before that time, as may occur following large hurricanes that flood the mud flats, the chicks cannot escape and the nesting ground be abandoned by the adults, who may soon re-nest. A failed nesting season may forever taint a region as unsuitable to ever breed in again, even long after the event is over.  Even generations later, wyvengos may avoid seemingly suitable nesting sites in favor of far more distant ones simply because their elders avoided them. It may take centuries for flocks to finally recolonize such a breeding ground.

~~~

The swamp subjugator is the ultimate apex predator of the trilliontree islands, being permanently absent only from the furthest-flung isles in the archipelago, though only transient on smaller islands lacking in abundant large prey. No animal is more dangerous, and none can rival it on land or sea. Other predators flee in its wake. Reaching 30 feet long, it can rival the cutthroat subjugator of mainland Serinarcta in this dimension, but it is far lighter, weighing only 4 tons to the cutthroat's 6 and as such it is a much more maneuverable, cursorial animal. Highly muscular, long legs let it run down and catch animals that would be too quick for its larger distant relative, and the bulk of its diet is comprised of juvenile and subadult giant skuorcs of the cygnosaur and skogre lineages, though it can occasionally kill adults through fast, opportunistic attacks on their throats when they are resting or drinking water. By predating these animals before they reach adulthood, it controls their populations - an important role in a limited habitat such as that found on these islands, where an overabundance of grazers would strip the land of vegetation.

Swamp subjugators are distinct among large sawjaws, having a narrow snout, very prominent sickle claws, and a posture where their heads are carried lower than their tails. They have longer jaws relative to the other subjugators, and recumbent teeth which lurch forwards from the jaw to bite fleeing prey and pull it backwards to be restrained by the large wrist claws, which are still of great importance in prey capture unlike in the cutthroat, which uses only its enormous, crushing jaws to hunt. They are virtually hairless, the only terrestrial subjugator to be so, on account of living in very wet and fetid environments where hair is only prone to collect filth, and their skin is uniquely plain, lacking typical stripes and rosettes of the sawjaw clade. All of these distinctive characteristics put the swamp subjugator in a genus all its own, and indeed this species represents an independent branch on the family tree, being a direct descendant of the swampsaw and a sister species to the true subjugators. 

These animals are dwellers of wet forests and are equally competent at traveling on land or in water. Their tail digits are webbed and their hind limb extremely powerful, propelling them across waterways of up to 50 miles at a steady pace, which makes them very wide ranging. They are naturally buoyant thanks to their huge lungs, which further aids sea crossings, but can sink below the waterline by exhaling and in doing so may launch suddenly out of the water and ambush drinking prey. On land, hunting is also by ambush, usually at night, always from thick forest cover at the edge of a beach or clearing. Unlike most sawjaws, but alike the cutthroat, they are solitary and territorial; cooperative behavior is unusual (but can occur between juvenile siblings and their mothers - see below), and adults will eat younger individuals if they catch them. Each individual requires a large territory to support itself, often multiple islands, and sometimes dozens of smaller ones - there is no space to share amicably. Adults of both sexes will cannibalize all unguarded adolescents as a way to take out future competitors; to prevent infanticide, females are up to 1/3 heavier than males, and only the largest and most mature females generally reproduce successfully. A single young stays with its mother for up to ten years, the longest sawjaw childhood, relying on its mother for protection until nearly fully grown; two young with a single mother - one five years older than the other - is not uncommon, and then the eldest will aid in care for the youngest until it eventually moves out on its own. Most females bear only one to two young in their lives, being displaced from their territories by successors after that time. Sexual maturity is very late, occurring not before 18 years of age, and lifespans are typically short at just 28 to 35 years on account of conflict with others of their species.

A great battle is in progress somewhere on the isles, and the deafening din of snapping jaws and baritone bellowing beasts carries far and wide to be heard over a thousand lands. Monkcats watch with curiosity, safe up in the treeline; scareotts are startled into rapid flight; a lumpus, acknowledging the danger slower than most, eventually decides to waddle away before he gets caught underfoot. A swamp subjugator has boldly, if not recklessly, taken on a titanic eyespot cygnosaur, a lone male, as big as they come.A similar species to mainland relatives like the draconic cygnosaur, he is not a gentle animal, but a fierce creature in his own right, and he puts up a mighty fight. She is outmatched; her opponent is many times her size, and rearing on his hind legs he now stands over 50 feet high. His tail strikes through the air at breakneck speeds, a bone-shattering whip which she dances at all times to avoid, leading the pair to waltz in a hateful, circling dance. The cygnosaur knows he has the upper hand. She is too small to overpower him, and she has long since lost the element of surprise. Unable to get a hold on his throat, she is powerless, left frustrated and snarling with indignation at her own inexperience. The cygnosaur, cocky in its dominance, goes so far as to lower its head, snapping a bite at its enemy. It was an overly confident decision.

The subjugator's mother, twice her weight, erupts in an explosive crash from the forest's edge in the single moment that the cygnosaur is unwary. Her target is not the animal's throat, but the base of his tail. With surgical precision, she slices through the vertebrae and disables his most substantial weapon. As he turns, unable to defend himself, the adolescent sawjaw takes her shot, leaping at his unguarded underbelly with four blade-like sickle claws, pulling him off his hind legs and onto his side with a devastating crash. The fight comes to an end as both hunters hold down their huge prey and cut off its airways with deadly slicing teeth. As solitary hunters, these educational hunts, where mother demonstrates skill to her soon-to-be independent offspring, are the only instances in which this species of subjugator still demonstrate the cooperative skill of their ancestral lineage. Only once the cygnosaur is still and silent, and the pair have begun to feed, and the strange little carrion-eaters begun to assemble along the treeline in wait to pick at the leftovers, does the youngest member of this little family cautiously peer out from the forest and tentatively come to join mother and sister in their hard-earned meal. He is only a few months old, and will only be able to watch the action for at least another ten months before he may begin to join in and practice the skills he will ultimately need to know for a life as the islands' apex predator - one that is, for now, still very far away.

~~~

There remains one last hunter to be discussed as our foray into the islands comes to its close. Not all who hunt are easily seen. Some hide in wait. They don't even have to chase you. You'll come to them. And they will get you in the most frightening ways.

Some predators aren't even animals.

Snakegrass is a very fast-growing carnivorous plant in the stranglesnare genus of centipedeweeds that is native to the trilliontree islands and southern Serinarcta. By length, it is the largest of any of them, with individual leaves capable of growing hundreds of feet long. This is a rooted plant, unlike some in its genus, which grows from a central crown just three to six inches high, connected to a massive bulb and a deep taproot up to 40 feet long that makes it all but impossible to pull out. Single leaves emerge from a rosette, which grow continuously from their base, living each for up to 25 years. And those leaves are each viciously barbed with silica spines in varied shapes and arrangements - some like skewers grow long and straight, others curl frightfully into hooks and talons.

They grow prostrate along the ground, creeping beneath a cover of grass and shrubbery, a hidden system of booby traps, snaking in hundreds of feet in every direction from the plant's crown. They slither between tussocks and through thickets, sneaking around boulders, and may even creep up tree trunks. The thorns that adorn each tendril serve to snag passing animals, holding them tight and catching on skin, fur and feathers worse with each movement they make to escape. Struggling causes the stems to tear along their length on the side of each leaf facing away from the trapped animal, and with the leaf's skin thus loosened, it immediately releases stored tension and contracts around the animal like a noose in a coiling motion, a process that begins with a few rapid strikes and then continues for a number of hours as the length of the vine slowly coils itself, dragging the animal helplessly into a pile of spines in the midst of its tangled up tendril. Every wound the plant has intentionally given itself in splitting its sides in order to wrap up its victim now oozes digestive enzymes; wrapped up within the constricting coils of the plant's leaf, all of its soft parts are eaten in as little as twelve hours, its nutrients trickled downstream from the tendril to the crown, and converted to stored sugars in the carnivore's roots. Though its stems are green to blend in with other plants, snakegrass - like all stranglesnares, which evolved in the darkness of caves - lacks chlorophyll and does not use sunlight for energy; its color comes from other pigments.

After feeding, snakegrass may have a hard time untangling itself; without true muscles, it cannot unwind its tendril the way it tightened. If the prey was small, the vine will merely continue to grow with a knot in its length. A larger kill will have resulted in more severe damage, and the plant will respond by drawing in all the fluid from the tip of its leaf so as to cause the end of the tendril to die. Then, over time, it will wither and break away. The leaf will re-grow from the root, as good as new, at a rate of up to ten feet per month in a mature specimen. Tendrils which regularly find food in a certain direction will continue to grow that way, while those which are unsuccessful will be cut off, and the new leaf tissue that replaces them will angle another way; snakegrass thus explores its environment, adapts to changes within it, and appears to learn from its mistakes.

Its rapid vegetative growth means it is hard to avoid, for its tendrils always travel, and what may have been a safe hiding place a month ago may now be a deadly trap where a tendril has crept in. This means that it is very difficult for animals to avoid this camouflaged botanical assassin, and it is a successful predator. But its speedy growth and constant movement underlies a weakness; it puts all of its defenses into its offense - its spines, rather few and far between along its great length, are wickedly sharp and very hard. But the same soft stems which enable it to rapidly split apart and contract to kill its prey are also very easily broken by outside forces. Unlike other centipedeweeds, the leaves of snakegrass - between each large spine - are fleshy, succulent, and edible. Very large animals too big to be stuck by its thorns can feed upon it with impunity, and conversely very little ones, such as seedsnatchers, can gnaw right through it between the traps. Leaves on a single snakegrass plant rarely last anywhere near as long as they potentially could, and most only grow to a few meters in lengths before something severs them and they must regenerate from the rosette. Only a few old plants manage to avoid such damage and reach the truly colossal size of their potential. Those which manage are the best hidden; the snakegrass's fondness to send its leaves through dark places and under cover of other plants is as much to hide from its own enemies - large grazers - as to hide from its prey. And they vine their way down the ancient routes they have long learned are safest.