The Time Of Hunger

Broadly speaking, living organisms have two reproductive strategies, known as ‘K’ and ‘R’.

K-Strategists produce low numbers of young and breed infrequently. The young mature slowly and do not become reproductively capable for a long time, sometimes years. They provide high levels of parental care to their young, who as a result enjoy high survival rates. They are often the apex (or near the top of) their food chain. Examples of K-strategists include elephants and humans.

R-Strategists produce high numbers of young and breed rapidly. The young quickly mature and become reproductively active in short periods of time (sometimes within days). Parental care is either short (due to rapid maturation of the young) or non-existent. R-Strategists are generally towards the bottom of their food chain, and as such suffer from high levels of mortality. Examples of R-strategists include insects and rodents.

It was unfortunate for all species involved that both rats and herring are R-strategists.

As a generalised example, let’s say a female rat produces a litter of 8 pups (four male, four female) 5 times a year. The females in the litter will be able to breed at the same time the next birthing happens. If each female produces the same sized litter- and the subsequent litters do the same- then within a year from that initial mated female there will be 1,600 rats. After 2 years, this becomes 560,000 rats- over half a million. For herring- who can produce tens of thousands of eggs per spawning- this number is even higher.

In a functional ecosystem the high birth rate is counteracted by the high mortality rate. Both rats and herring are prey species and form a large part of many predators’ diets, which keeps their population numbers down to manageable levels. However, on Loki there were no predators. No owls, no foxes, no sharks, no gulls. With no predators to keep their numbers in check the rat and herring population exploded, with disastrous consequences.

The Situation On Land

As the rat population rapidly rose the rats spread outwards across the land in waves of migration, searching for new food sources. The rats were faced with a cruel irony; although adaptable and able to eat nearly anything, the one food they couldn’t digest was grass. As a result the foods they could eat (invertebrates and seeds) were quickly exhausted, forcing them to either migrate to find new food sources or starve. Although this meant that rats very quickly colonised all the land within reach, it also meant that soon there was nowhere left for them to go. With no new territory to seize and food supplies non-existent, catastrophe and death swept the land.

The rats ate every seed they could, driving multiple grass species into extinction as the seeds were devoured before they could set. Invertebrates were driven underground- deeper than burrowing, grasping paws could reach- or took to the air and places even the cunning rats could not travel to. The land swarmed with brown furry bodies, each individual desperately searching and fighting for the smallest scrap of sustenance. The dead were devoured, weaker individuals culled and eaten by their stronger, starving rivals. This resulted in repeated, severe population crashes and booms; when the food ran out the population crashed from starvation, which gave grasses and invertebrates a chance to recover their own populations. Once these species recovered to a reasonable extent the rat population once again increased, eating this new food and once again causing famine. And so for centuries, millennia, the cycle of feast and famine rose and fell like clockwork, the verdant paradise turned into a hell of hunger.

The Situation In Water

Although the terrestrial species were suffering from the Time of Hunger, the aquatic species had it far worse.

As the herring spawned the maturing fish joined the great shoals. As a coastal species herring were reluctant to move into deep waters, meaning that the shoals became larger and larger and larger, constrained by their preferred habitat. The shoals grew by trillions upon trillions each spawning season, eventually merging into a global super-shoal that stretched thousands of miles down the coastline. In some places the fish were packed so closely together a rat could scamper over the top like their bodies were a bridge.

The sheer mass of their bodies combined with their efficient hunting strategy meant that the zooplankton they fed on were practically eradicated from coastal waters. Small invertebrates such as copepods fled into the deeper waters to escape the insatiable predation. The resulting starvation of the fish lead to far more disastrous consequences than the Hunger had on land.

Rats are opportunist omnivores, and as such had no qualms with scavenging their dead. Herring however are not adapted for eating flesh, and thus left their dead untouched. The sheer number of dead fish completely overwhelmed the seafloor scavengers, resulting in the seabed becoming covered with a literal strata of rotting fish. As the fish decayed tissue separated from the body and entered the water column, becoming marine snow- particles of organic matter. Usually marine snow is vital to the health of marine ecosystems, an important food source to deep water organisms. But the amount that was being produced from thousands of square miles of rotting fish made the snow an unending blizzard. The organic matter choked the water column, turning the sea bed into a fetid, anoxic morass. As the thickly polluted water rose the herring in turn found their habitat shrinking; and as they succumbed to the anoxia their bodies contributed to the poison that suffocated the global shoal.

Oysters and marine plants became restricted to liminal zones: water shallow enough to escape the anoxia, yet deep enough to escape the ravenous rats who were turning to the ocean for subsentence. Conversely, this was a golden age for the copepods: in the deep waters they had no piscine predators, and the volume of the water meant that the marine snow was not as choking as it was in the coastal waters. For a brief period of time these tiny crustaceans thrived, at the expense of the rest of their aquatic kin.

The Hunger Subsides

Nature will always find an equilibrium. Though the Time of Hunger had claimed countless lives and species, eventually the ecosystem began to stabilise.

The Time of Hunger had been caused by the rapid breeding rate of the rats and herring, and yet perversely it was this ability that also saw it come to an end. The rapid reproductive rate combined with severe environmental pressures resulted in evolution kicking into overdrive. Any small advantage a creature had rapidly spread through the population, and as generations came and went these advantageous genes accumulated, resulting in distinctive anatomical and behavioural changes. No longer homogenous, both the rat and herring populations had began to speciate, becoming more and more specialised to exploit different ecological niches. As competition lessened the ecosystem found stability, the population booms and busts fading. The world was not yet healthy, but it was certainly more functional. Now finding their feet (literal or metaphorical), the emerging species began to explore their new niches as the wheels of evolution turned and bought them into a new age.

The Archeacene had begun.