Bug Ferret Ecology Breakdown (Patreon)

I'm commissioning a cutaway illustration of a bug ferret house from a friend who is better at architectural design than me, and was finally forced to actually diagram how ferret underground ecosystems work.

Accompanying text from the design doc:

"Bug ferrets live in an extensive tunneling cave network below a temperate-to-frozen planet’s surface. These caves are partially formed by water, with huge geothermal lakes in their deepest regions, but much of their spread is created by the roots/mycelium constricting and eating the planet’s crust. The tunnels these roots create are filled with their glowing flowers and fruit, attracting pollinators and frugivores to spread their genetics to new regions of the underground. Bug ferrets themselves evolved from such pollinators, though their diet also includes basically anything they can manage to eat, including the small herbivores that dine on their glowing flower gardens.

Though it depends in the local depth of the tunnels, generally the upper half of the underground is dominated by warm sinkholes filled with shade tolerant and cold intolerant plants and the fungi/detritivores feeding on them. These fungi grow their flowers down into the midlevel of the tunnels. The lower half of the underground has its producers living in geothermal pools, creating sugars via chemosynthesis or thermosynthesis. They have their own extremophile fungi/detritivores, and also an unusual kind of flora takes advantage of high temperatures to dissolve and eat compounds in the rock and volcanic solids. Much of this flora also sends flowers and fruit up to the midlevel tunnels for sexual reproduction and distribution. As a result of this, soil horizons are extremely localized and jumbled.

Although some of the tunnels that ferrets inhabit are excavated with tools, they are usually cultivated instead! By manipulating the local flora, bug ferrets can grow new tunnel offshoots wherever they please, with significantly less risk of cave-in than excavation. The main problem is that this is slow. If a ferret wants to create a new wing of tunnel for future habitation by this growth, it will likely be their grandchildren and great grandchildren who will inhabit it. Excavation mostly happens in areas with a rapidly expanding population and is considered dangerous and desperate by traditionalists."