Consuvocucumia

**Consuvocucumians** are a clade of celernantids that are alive today.

## Evolution and taxonomy

Consuvocucumians are a highly diverse clade of aquatic celernantids, a sister clade of piscelaborians. Together they make the Piscelaboromorpha clade, which has originated in the Variagene, some 119 million years ago. As the Compsogene arived, consuvocucumians originated, 91 million years ago, eventually dividing into two different lineages. One gave rise to gigantoichthyans, which originated 61 million years ago in the late Compsogene, as early amphibious creatures. Eventually, by the Recensgene, one clade of gigantoichthyans originated, the setaichthyans, which evolved 31 million years ago, and are characterized for using hyoid jaws, allied to proboscis, to form their mouth apparatus. The other consuvocucumians split are the vaporpistroideans, which evolved in the late Compsogene 63 million years ago. Eventually vaporpistroids suffered the inception of two Recensgene originated clades, the vaporpistrians, evolved 31 million years ago, authentic filter feeders, and the natarevolantians, that evolved 35 million years ago, and are ancestrally gliders/fliers, but some species reverted to a fully aquatic lifestyle.

Piscelaboromorpha (119-0)

* Piscelaboria (59-0)
* Consuvocucumia (91-0)
	+ Gigantoichthya (61-0)
		- Talon jaws
		- Setaichthya (31-0)
			* Bristled beakfish
			* Giant sawbill
	+ Vaporpistrioidea (63-0)
		- Vaporpistria (31-0)
			* Aquafugia
			* Vapourshark
		- Natarevolantia (35-0)
			* Consuvolantes
			* Natare cucumis

## Characteristics

Consuvocucumians have various unique anatomical adaptations that make them very distinct. The fact that these anatomical differentiations have taken place in less than 100 million years, however, are astonishing, showing the sheer speed of differentiation of these creatures. Starting with their mouths. Like the basal consuspeculates, consuvocucumians only consume their food through the orifice derived from the central proboscis. The lateral proboscis might take an active part in collecting food and directing it to the central one, but they do not themselves ingest food, with the exception of the vapoursharks, which have repurposed their feeding capabilities in those organs. The lateral proboscis usually have cartilaginous supports to help with rigidity when processing food. Talon jaws have finger-like and slightly articulated proboscis to pull the food inside the central proboscis, which is just a central cavity. Setaichthyans have the characteristic of rapidly having evolved hyoid jaws, which store the proboscis inside. The lateral shred the food, while the central proboscis releases digestive enzymes to make the food more digestible to later be swallowed. Beakfish have ossified claws in the tips of the proboscis to shred the food. Vaporpistrians have lateral proboscis tied to the respiratory system, which allows them to breath atmospherical air, whenever they feel its more appropriate. Aquafugia has lateral proboscis that serve the specific role of breathing air out of the water, like a snorkel, while the huge central proboscis engulfs large portions of water for filter feeding. Vapoursharks, instead have a large cavity, where the lateral proboscis stand out of the mouth to feed on blood. Given blood is a fluid, it has managed to pass through the lateral proboscis cavities with much more ease, allowing the creature to re-evolve food consumption through those organs. The proboscis also end in ossified ends as youngs, to chisel through the dorsal bony armour of their prey. As adults, that ossified end disappears, and they instead suck blood floating in the water. Their lateral proboscis are twisted inside the cavity and stay vertical instead. Adults loose their abbility of feeding through the lateral proboscis, and then just use them to collect the blood to the central proboscis, deeper inside the cavity. Vapoursharks also have rudimentary hyoid jaws, which move laterally, and are very thin, used to channel the water towards the mouth, or to grab to hosts, as young. Natarevolantians have fused three proboscis, which are then constructed in a sort of retractable tube that they use to suck food. Consuvolantes even ends its "tube" into three ends, with "claws", to grab prey. The prey is then swallowed inside the tube and directed to the tube that corresponds to the one from the central proboscis. The eyes of the consuvocucumians work like in their close relatives. They are composed of an internalized eye ring, that usually has two openings in many consuvocucumians, with the exception of the setaichthyans. Bristled beakfish have reduced their eye ring to irrelevancy, and they orient themselves by sensing the surrounding vibrations. Sawbills, in contrast, have a large eye ring, that has eight openings, the four frontal openings help in the detection of prey, while the four backward ones detect predators and threats from behind. They are all simple compound eyes, some sensitive to various color spectrums, even beyond the human abbilities in that regard. The number of limbs is variable, but basally, consuvocucumians have eight limbs. Talon jaws have two pairs of bony fins at the front, and two pairs of sucker-like or limb-like fins in the back, for bottom-dwelling and land-dwelling locomotion. Natarevolantians also have eight limbs, largely attached to a sideways running fin, to move like a flatworm on the bottom of the ocean, or above the waves, to glide or even "fly". Setaichthyans, however, only have six limbs, working as small fins to help stabilization when swimming, though they are also used to crawl onto land with these to lay their eggs on land. Vaporpistrians basally have six limbs. Aquafugia has four fins for steering and underwater stabilization, and a middle pair that work as mating claspers. Vapoursharks only have two pairs of limbs, one frontal large pair to help it move underwater, and another back pair that is very reduced and maybe used for locking in mating. The respiratory orifices of the consuvocucumians have different arrangements too. Talon jaws have slit-like vertical gills gathered at the middle of the body. Setaichthyans have vertical gills in front of their limbs, close to the neck, for better gas exchange. Natarevolantians have orifice rows just above their fins, so that they can breath when still on the ocean bottom. Vaporpistrians, however, have slit-like gills, in front of their limbs, like setaichthyans, but with dual purposes. These are attached by very small respiratory channels, at the same time that they are used to filter the food in the digestive tract, before going to the stomach. For some species, when doing this proccess, the oxygen intake is hard to check, so they can breath out of the water, with their lateral proboscis if needed, specially Aquafugia. All consuvocucumians are capable of air breathing, thanks to the presence of a lung (in the case of natarevolantians, that lung is two-chambered to increase efficiency). Their internal anatomy is very complex as well. Just like their close relatives, they lack an endoskeleton proper, so they instead possess lots of muscular proccesses to help them move around. Basally they possess a very small gland at the front of their brain for the making of blood. This is a unique feature of consuvocucumians, and is supposed to be a tool for the transfer of blood to the frontal organs, as the heart of the consuvocucumians is located farther from the frontal zone of the body. This gland is very small in gigantoichthyans, as their heart is located at the chest, just below the stomach, but that gland is much bigger in vaporpistroids, whose heart is more complex, a three chambered heart, located behind the stomach, so they need an organ that aids in the management of blood flux. The brain is located in the skull, like all consuspeculates, and is very simple in gigantoichthyans, however it has two lobes in the vaporpistroideans. Consuvocucumians have a urinary tube attached to the stomach, or derived from the digestive system just in front of the stomach, that leads to a tube for outflowing water, that opens into a belly orifice, that is not tied to the reproduction tract or the respiratory orifices. This organ is present in many dispeculates. In gigantoichthyans, this orifice is small and reduced, but in some vaporpistrioideans it can be very large. They possess a reproductive tract tied to the digestive system, and they produce their eggs there. In gigantoichthyans, the reproductve tract diverged from the digestive system before the cloacal opening, but in vaporpistrioideans it converged right in the cloaca. Consuvocucumians also have two nerve chords that diverged from the brain and run laterally through the body and into the tail, though in these they are more oriented to the dorso, simillarly to how other dispeculates converged those into a vertebral column. Consuvocucumians movements are largely simillar to those of an Earth's fish. Many have vertical tail flukes, though many of them are flattened, reduced or non-existent to work in bottom-dwelling motion. Natare cucumis moves like a nudibranch, by ondulating its lateral fins, supported by eight bony limbs. Talon jaws have no tail fluke. moving in the water bottom by ondulating their body, and using their fins to move around. Consuvolantes moves with a vertical tail fluke, with its wings folded. But when they jump out of the water, their are able to glide and even fly. They do it in a weird way though... upside down. This way they are able to see things below the water before going back to it when they require. They flap their wings, in a simillar fashion to a dragonfly, though not at the same speed. They don't like to stay too much time in the sky, or else, they risk being prey to aerial hunters.

Consuvocucumians vary in size. The smallest are the talon jaws, with the smallest species being 7 cm in length, while the largest reaching 45 cm long. Consuvolantes measure 30-40 cm in length. Natare cucumis is 60 cm long. The beakfish can reach a maximum length of 2 meters. Vapourshark reach a maximum length of 2,4 meters. Sawbills are the largest, at 7 meters in length.

## Distribution and habitat

Consuvocucumians are spread across almost everywhere in the globe, in every ocean, and almost everywhere that is freshwater. Talon jaws and beakfish are widespread freshwater species. Talon jaws exist in freshwater courses in every continent, except Terra Septentrionis, and can visit coastal saltwaters. Beakfish are widespread in nearly every landmass, except Terra Septentrionis, in freshwater environments. Due to their recent evolution, its hard to know exactly how they got to isolated regions, such as Prin or Archa, but its possible they might have been drifted inidviduals that survived at sea and later colonized the isolated islands. Other theories suggest storms seeded the isolated islands with larvae of beakfish in the rivers and lakes. Sawbills are, however, marine, despite being related to beakfish. They exist in the shallow Vadum Mare region. Vaporpistrians have a patchy dsitribution. Aquafugia has the cold oceanic waters around Terra Septentrionis as refuge, and extinct vapourshark relatives have been found in recent fossil evidence in an arctic archipelago. Eventually the extinction or inexistence overall of vaporpistrians in warmer waters is still surrounded by mystery. Vapoursharks likely only survived in the Media Insulan lake, Musa Sapientum Fixa, due to its isolation, which allowed them to prosper in their unique niche, without competition. Consuvolantes is, by far, the most widespread, found in every ocean of the globe. Natare cucumis is a larger relative found in the secluded reefs of Isla Inferno.

## Diet

The diet of consuvocucumians is variable as adults. Most are carnivores, while some are omnivores. Talon jaws are carnivores, using their articulated cartilaginous proboscis to restrain prey. Beakfish use their large bill to restrain prey, until their proboscis do the job of creating damage. They are also canibalistic, when not in the mating season. However, beakfish do often feed in polyspeculates, making them omnivores. Sawbills use their saws, like a sawfish, to kill prey. Aquafugia are planktivores, feeding on plankton with their huge mouth and filtering it, through the gills, before they store the food in the stomach. Vapoursharks do a simillar strategy. As youngsters, they drill from the bone of hosts to drink their blood, thanks to their lateral proboscis, which are unusual for being the only ones in consuvocucumians, to use the lateral proboscis for food consumption. As they grow into adults, they use their lateral proboscis to collect floating blood and meat particles in the water to direct it to the central proboscis in the deep oral cavity. Consuvolantes use their tube like proboscis to grab small dispeculates and polyspeculates to feed on, for they are omnivores. Natare cucumis, uses the proboscis tube to suck and eat parasites from larger creatures.

## Behaviour and sociality

Consuvocucumians are not known to be very gregarious. Gigantoichthyans are predators that are largely solitary when not in the mating season. When they find each other outside the mating season, they might perform cannibalism. Vaporpistrioideans are also solitary as adults, but because they are largely not cannibalistic or super predatorial, they will have no problems with intraspecific gatherings. Outside of the mating season, the only gatherings that might occur are when food sources support the gathering of several individuals of the species.

## Reproduction

All consuvocucumians generate eggs for reproduction. The way they do it is very variable among the different clades. Gigantoichthyans lay hard-shelled eggs on land, or extremelly shallow water. The exact reasons why they have evolved this characteristic is uncertain. Either way, the adults crawl onto land, and bury their eggs under the sand or mud, and abandon them to their fate. The babies hatch out and crawl back to the water. Giant sawbills do this by shaking their body towards the banks or a beach, using their strong muscles to crawl in and out of the sand. The females are slightly more gracile to help in that task, but even males are able to crawl on land, which is tied to their sexual display. Setaichthyan males, in general, go to the edge of the water or shallows, to perform rituals. Beakfish clap their hardened bill, creating sounds to attract the female. Sawbills splash their saw in the water, and if this attracts the female they mate. The gigantoichthyan males do not compete for mating, unlike the related talon jaws, which use their proboscis to fight against rivals if needed. They proceed with internal fertilization. Young gigantoichthyans crawl out of the nest and into the water, where they pursue a slow-growing infant life as small transaparent larvae, only to grow to greyish juveniles and later to adults, after a few years of maturing. Natarevolantians are unique among consuvocucumians for practicing external fertilization. The females lay their soft-shelled eggs in the water, where they are externally fertilized by the male, and then abandoned. The young will then hatch out as small larvae and gradually grow into adulthood. Both species of vaporpistrians have radical forms of reproduction. Both species have internal fertilization however. Vapoursharks are also unique for performing assexual reproduction, with each individual eventually choosing to perform the role of the male or the female during the sexual intercourse. Once the fertilization is done, the female will eventually lay her eggs in polyspeculates, where the small soft shelled eggs will be attached to. The female will die days after she lays her eggs. Right at this stage, the thin eggshell allows the embryo to suck nutrients from the polyspeculate, before hatching out of the egg, and pursuing a life as a parasite, drinking blood for the armored plates of predators, which are too menacing to be messed with any predator that might want to go near them. The young breath underwater, but eventually they will be able to occasionally breath out of the water, when they become adults, which is a characteristic common among every vaporpistrioideans, and unlike gigantoichthyans. Aquafugia has a radically different stretegy of reproduction. Living in the open ocean, it is very complicated to find proper ground to lay the eggs. The female will instead lay the eggs inside the male, which has a special uterus for the gestation of the young. The female will die after the mating, but the male will stay alive gestating the eggs inside until they hatch and the male gives birth to the water-breathing young. The young will, for a moment survive on a special "milk gland", located in the male's throat, that feeds the young until they reach a considerable size to live on their own, and later evolved air-breathing abbilities. Aquafugia stands with the megadontian Megapterigia, as one of the only ovoviviparous celernantids.