Sedes Draconis talk:Life Cycle Key

From Sedes Draconis

I'm trying to systematize a set of life cycle traits. Not least because I'm making the life cycle info a template.

I had previouly decided to make "incubation period" cover both incubation of eggs and of pouch-incubation of marsupial neonate who can not yet leave the pouch. This is an idiosyncratic usage, but I don't find any other good terminology for this in marsupials. This might cause some problems in monotreme-like animals with both eggs and pouches (e.g. earthly echidnas). I'm not sure if animals like that exist on Sedes Draconis; the major class of egg-laying mammals are the eptenyctans, which do not follow that model.

I had also previously decided that the physical maturity trait, which in most case I'm using in a way that mostly matches up with sexual maturity, would be given as a split number in things like birds and dryads which have a distinct age at which they become adult-like (fledging in birds, leaving the water in dryads); which significantly precedes sexual maturity.

A little later, I listed a fledging age for the Kaeghøk, inconsistent with that decision.

I think I want to seperate out fledging age. The question is, do I also seperate out metamorphosis? probably. Do I merge that with fledging age, or give it a seperate field? what do I call these field?

Still working on these questions.

Aidan 14:47, 4 May 2007 (PDT)