Biome: The Sunflower Barrens

Sunflower barrens are a sort of biome-in-progress, a rather unnatural and impermanent forest type that won't last indefinitely. With the soil around them inhibited from colonization by other plant species due to the toxic tannins released by plants of the sunflower family, these woodlands are more the result of the sunflower's adaptable nature in an environment without competition than a lasting ecosystem type; until other plant species come to better tolerate their presence in the soil, they are abnormally lacking in floral biodiversity and subsequently that of animals too - thus their common name. For much of the year they're virtual green deserts - alive, beautiful, but almost wholly lacking in food, with only a small number of insects feeding on the foliage in turn providing food for a relatively poor bird population. Outside the autumn crop, drawing in a brief flush of migrants off the grasslands, they're inhabited permanently by almost no animal beyond occasional wanderers from adjacent forest or grassland environments. The plants are coarse, fibrous, and irritating to the digestive tracks of all but the most specialized herbivores, of which there are still fairly few in regards to birds - and in winter, when the petals fall and the leaves wither, the dried stalks offer little shelter from wind or weather.

Among the only permanent residents of any note are various species of large mole-crickets which fill the approximate niches of rodents, nibbling on roots and tubers underground through the hard times and gathering sizable stores of fallen seeds in subterranean caches when they come available. Unlike most crickets today, Serinan species often live several seasons, thus their large sizes, provided they are able to nestle deep enough in the soil to avoid frost in more temperate climates. Even if they are killed in winter slumber, however, most species will have bred by the end of their first summer, leaving their eggs in the dirt to hatch and begin the next generation with the coming of spring. For the few birds that nest in the sunflower barrens a healthy breeding season depends on the size of the spring hatching and subsequent migration of young mole-crickets, which occurs en-masse above the ground. The crickets, which hatch at just under a centimeter in length, have evolved to all emerge at once and swamp their predators with the hope that a few individuals manage to survive and spread out to new territories successfully in the confusion, with over 95% of hatchlings being taken in the first two weeks of the hatching season. Hatching occurs at any time in the spring following two to three weeks of steady warm temperatures, but if there has been a poor crop of seeds the prior autumn many adults may not have been able to take in enough protein to breed and the following year's hatching will be small or non-existent. In these poor years, which occur often every ten years or so, many nestling birds, with their eggs incubated intentionally to hatch them out at the same time as the crickets, will starve to death before the next glut of insects in the form of less hardy beetle larvae and aphids awaken several weeks later.

The sunflowers, though they bloom only for a short three-week window in mid-summer, nevertheless produce so much pollen and nectar at once during this brief flush that entire colonies of a few specialized species of honey ants - an ant clade which have become more or less stingless bees in the absence of the real thing - are able to make a living within the forest, storing up their entire years' worth of food during this time thanks to workers which are hatched only weeks before the predicted bloom and which die almost immediately after the petals wither, ensuring that they use as little of the precious food as possible after gathering it, to feed the queen. Alongside a small number of flightless workers, she will then bide her time until the next summer, with the queen, large and immobile in adulthood, doing little more than lying in near-dormancy for most of this time as her housekeepers maintain the integrity of the burrow. Due to the extremely short duration of the food supply and the need to reserve it so meticulously throughout the rest of the year, the queens of species that survive in this habitat only lays eggs twice per year - one series of clutches before the bloom which will hatch to become the flying food gatherers, and one right after, which consists of fertile drones and new queens which will gorge on the season's harvests before flying off to mate and settle into their own new colonies, taking with them in specialized baskets upon their hind legs just enough pollen and honey for the female to rely on until the next spring. A surprise lies in store for the males shortly afterwards, whom after choosing a mate and constructing their first home together in a patch of soft soil, will mate her only once before being cannibalized and fed upon, his body providing the boost of protein she will need come spring to lay her first clutch of eggs. Stored sugars within subterranean honey ant colonies in the sunflower barrens are among the only rich food source available for animals outside the seeding season and are occasionally pilfered by opportunistic sweet-toothed birds that pass through the barrens outside of choice season - they are spread out and often difficult to locate, however, and do not make up a significant part of any one creature's diet, with no creature beyond a few other small arthropods (such as the nest-parasitic Dew-drop beetle, a cuckoo ladybird which favors this species as a host, eating both their eggs as larvae and their sugary food stores as adults) specialized to feed from them.