Deviation Actions
Description
[Note: I've never done speculative biology before, so I don't know much about it and what I'm writing here might actually be utter bullshit, haha (though I did do research, of course). In that case: Sorry. :/ Oh and uh, I'd finished this several days ago.. Just needed to find the guts to actually upload this xD.]
So here's my entry for 
's Nea contest, where the task is to create a fictional species that could be living on a planet invented by him: Nea.
Periclimenes cf. imperator, commonly referred to as Neanean Emperor Shrimp, is a partner shrimp that can be found in shallow waters of the northern Kurnugian Sea.
It's ancestors from Earth, emperor shrimps (P. imperator) can often be found living on sea cucumbers or sea slugs, preferably on such of the genus Hexabranchus (especially the so-called spanish dancer, which can reach lenghts up to 50cm). This makes them the only known partner shrimps that actually choose mobile, sometimes free-swimming, hosts, though there also are some specimen that seem to live without any host at all. Also, they are rather wide-spread throughout the Indo-Pacific Ocean and have been reported from the African coast and the Red Sea up to Hawaii and Australia. Therefore, they seem to be able to adapt to quite different areas and conditions and little genetical engineering was needed to prepare them for the Neanean environment. When, finally, these shrimps first came to Nea, they were rather restricted to slightly brackish and shallow water which resembled the Pacific saltwater, as most of the Kurnugian Sea was still too salty for them.
After some time, an interesting development could be observed: More and more emperor shrimps chose Nea's giant sea slugs, mostly Mangrove Mulakangos, as their new hosts (see the upper left picture: a specimen clawing into a Mulakango's skin). Apparently, they were similar enough to the Earth shrimp's preferred hosts. Adapting to a now almost constantly free-swimming lifestyle, the emperor shrimps' bodies became a bit thinner and more streamlined (males even more than females), resulting in them looking a bit more elegant than their cousins on Earth. They also developed little claws on their feet which help them stay on a swimming sea slug (as can be seen in the drawings and is also known of another periclimenes shrimp from earth that lives in anemones) and, obviously, became a lot more transparent. They now no longer display the vibrant red-orange colour which originally helped them camouflage on spanish dancers, but instead look similar to many related species on Earth with only a weak orange tinge left (many Periclimenes shrimps are extremely transparent and therefore hard to discover). Aditionally, the white pattern on their back became less prominent, often missing completely (the right drawing shows an average specimen, whereas the ones on the left side still have a lot of white visible). This probably makes Neanean Emperor Shrimps look less impressing than their Earth relatives, but they are well camouflaged on their host's green back. In combination with their small size of maximally 2cm, they are surprisingly hard to detect despite their still colourful legs.
On the Mulakangos' back, some emperor shrimps slowly reached more brackish areas of the Kurnugian sea and became more resistant to a changing salinity (which had already been slightly improved by the genetical engineering I mentioned earlier).
Usually, emperor shrimps do not leave their host unless it dies. They constantly search its skin for food, but the company is not a symbiotic one, but rather parasitic (though the host does not seem to suffer at all). When a Mulakango sunbathes, the shrimps move to the shadowed bottom, where they are a bit less exposed.
Since it is not sure yet whether the Neanean Emperor Shrimp has already developed far enough to be considered a new species or still has to be enlisted as a subspecies of P. imperator, it is usually referred to as Periclimenes cf. [conferre] imperator, though occasionally, the names P. i. elegans (subspecies) and P. neanensis (species) are used, too.
It is also speculated that Nea's emperor shrimps might actually develop into more than one species, as their distribution is connected to their host's distribution. With different sea slugs being chosen as hosts, there could eventually be several seperated populations adapting to different environments (e.g. emperor shrimps reaching and adapting to saltier areas of the Kurnugian Sea).
Disclaimer:
Nea was invented by Hyrotrioskjan / Joschua Knüppe, as were Mangrove Mulakangos.
--> Nea: hyrotrioskjan.deviantart.com/g…
--> Mangrove Mulakango: hyrotrioskjan.deviantart.com/a…
