Re: [Space/Aliens] Reproductive Features: alien, exotic and weird ideas
 

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You always make real life sound so freaky *admiring* Cool article. I note that the linked article regarding the effect of the symbionts on their hosts is talking about an apparently unrelated disease affecting the shells?

Synchronous note: Just posted in the ISWAT Theme thread, where a recent entry was about a song by the Danish-Norwegian band Aqua. Maybe they could do a research fundraiser *g*

Pandora, hmm? "I'll take what's in the box, Monty."

Re: [Space/Aliens] Reproductive Features: alien, exotic and weird ideas
 

Well then there now. I like it. I think.

I'd love to see a picture of one of those. It would take quite an artist to make something, "freakishly beautiful," to match the description. Sounds like the kind of challenge a budding H.R. Giger could go for.

Re: [Space/Aliens] Reproductive Features: alien, exotic and weird ideas
 

An idea I found in Stephen Baxter's saga about evolution:

Some sort of predator has a certain percentage of its pups born totally without pigmentation (the species happens to have non-colored blood). To the spectrum visible by most of their prey, they are near-transparent, gaining enormous advantages in ambushes. However, this also makes them very vulnerable to the harsh solar radiation of a harsh star, causing them to never even reach maturity. To make matters worse, they are only properly stealthy when there isn't any food remaining in their gastrointestinal system, so other pack-mates tend to deprive them of food first when everybody starts getting hungry. The non-transparent brood relies on them heavily for hunting food.

When I read it, I was kinda dubious about the net benefit of using such a caste strategy. But I still count it among one of the most interesting, bizarre ideas. Even though not necessarily plausible.

P.S.: BTW, while you're at it, might want to take a close look at the specific example from the OP in a closer-up zoom.

Re: [Space/Aliens] Reproductive Features: alien, exotic and weird ideas
 

Here's a fictional concept from my Orichalcum Universe, something found on another planet (but biologically related to Earth life).

An immense vertebrate creature spends most of its life floating on the ocean, in the warm tropic waters of its world. It's slow, stupid, and huge, bigger than a blue whale, it contains within its body cavities full of air that give it buoyancy. It breathes air, and could be drowned if it could be held under water, but its lungs are fed by multiple tubes and it's almost impossible to force a living one underwater, because of their buoyancy and the tremendous strength of its limbs and body, which will fight to stay afloat. The closest Terran relative of this immense monster is Rattus rattus

Its thick, tough hide is made of a leathery tissue many inches thick, with many small holes and gaps, within which a local species of bird lays its eggs. These voids (about six inches wide) are filled with nesting materials from the land areas gathered by flying insects, who feed on a nutrient fluid secreted by the 'floater'. These insects in fact act as living 'maintenance robots' crawling all over the enormous creature, cleaning it, removing parasites, defending it when attacked, etc. There are actually several mutually cooperating types of insects living on and in these floaters, their closest Terran kin are various bees, ants and termites.

When the bird-eggs hatch, the insects (some of them, anyway) feed the hatchlings, and when the hatchlings are big enough to fly away, larval insects catch a ride with them, thus exchanging DNA with other colonies on other 'floaters' when the birds lay their own eggs. The larvae brought in by the parents of the hatchlings mate with the 'native' colony.

Not all the insects do this, though. Some of the insects have flying castes, these can seek out mates elsewhere on their own. Still others use ocean currents to move their egg-sacs to where other floaters encounter them.

The floaters themselves do not mate, rather, one kind of flying insect transports sperm from the male to a female floater by flying/swimming.

Re: [Space/Aliens] Reproductive Features: alien, exotic and weird ideas
 

VERY cool thread! I think you can get some funky concepts by looking at the whole life cycle (gestation and development) rather than just mating patterns. A couple ideas:

From a science fiction short story whose name I can't remember. A race of amphibians called the Darotha: they looked like leopards with octopus tentacles sprouting around their necks. (Update (2013): The story is called "Overproof" by Jonathan Blake MacKenzie (aka Randall Garrett).) They reproduce by spraying their eggs and spermatozoa at certain times of the year into protected coastal estuaries, like coral. The babies grow in a tadpole-like form, gradually gaining sentience living and feeding on the coast, protected and raised communally by the adults. Eventually they undergo metamorphosis into adult form; at that point they are adopted by a family. It's therefore impossible for darotha to know who their genetic parents are, or for matches to be arranged. I actually don't think such a system is viable: there are few selective mechanisms and with the parents protecting the offspring the population pressures should have been enormous. But that wasn't the point of the story (the point was that their main food source was a non-sentient herd animal that looks exactly like earth humans, and the story was about scientific objectivity).

Another idea, based loosely on your idea in another thread. Imagine one species with three sexes: one male and two female. Each female has an extended X chromosome. The male can fertilize either female form. One or both female types can produce males, but they can only create females of their own type. The two types of female are extremely different, and have different social roles. So successful communities have all three sexes represented. Genes don't cross within a generation (as in your species) but do cross between generations. (It doesn't have to be two females and a male.)

A variation on this could be created as a parasite (or biotech creation). Imagine a "second male" parahuman that has to hybridize with a human female to create (male-only) offspring of its own type. Mars Needs Women! ;) (Again, this is quite reverseable-- I actually had a female naga-like creature that required human males that I created for a fantasy campaign.) For long-term success, such a parasite would have to allow normal human reproduction to ensure mates for its own offspring-- all the better if the parasite can do something useful and be a symbiot.

Somebody talked about hermaphrodites, but an evolutionary implication of this is that males make a smaller investment into creating a larger number of potential offspring. So for hermaphrodites, the dominant ones (physically, socially, however they choose mates) would likely take on the male role to take advantage of the maximum number of mating opportunities, and the less dominant ones the female role, which lowers the downside risk. (Reverse all this if, like seahorses, the major reproductive investment is made by the male instead.)

Lots of great Larry Niven references, so let's not forget his suggestion of having extreme sexual dimorphism, or even a non-sapient sex.

Several people mentioned the idea of having intergenerational changes in morphology. Here's an extreme case (adapted from Bio Tech). A male and female mate. The female lays an egg (really, a seed) that grows into a tree. The tree pollinates and gestates a bulb that contains an embryo. The embryo is the animal form. So every other generation is a plant. Why do it this way? Say you have extreme solar variability. The plant form keeps its genetic information and embryos underground, and is itself resistant to radiation. The animal form is the more efficient reproducer, and eats the plant form's competition. During a multi-year period of heavy solar activity, the animal form can be killed off, but the plant form survives and releases its young when the radiation dies down.

Inspired by locusts here's an awesome result: imagine a race that is noble and cooperative under normal conditions. But during periods of famine, the morphology changes drastically into a highly aggressive, predatory form. Such a race can get "failed states" on a level that would shock even humans. (Though you'd have to figure out how the Dr. Jekyl form could survive against the Mr. Hydes. Perhaps the nice version is herbivorous and the predators exclusively carnivorous and only compete with one another.)

I tried to think of a sexual cycle based on the Predator Satiation strategy used by cicadas, but I can't think of one that would work for intelligent beings. Though perhaps mix it with the locust idea and have the swarming version be non-sapient larva.

Finally, what if the intelligence in a creature is the result of symbiosis? A termite without symbiotic bacteria can't digest cellulose, for example. Or there's the insect-colonizing fungus in the Amazon-- it alters the animal's brain to force it to crawl as high as possible, then kills it, consumes it, buds, and releases its spores. What if a fungus stimulated brain growth, communication and tool use in an otherwise non-sapient creature? (I suppose a little like Niven's Pak race.) Now you have two distinct species... perhaps the infected creature uses its intelligence to select appropriate partners to pollinate with (asexually, or based on the sexuality of the fungus) and also reproduces conventionally (and then arranges for its young to be infected). You'd be two sexes at once (for you and your symbiot) and have two distinct sets of parents.

Re: [Space/Aliens] Reproductive Features: alien, exotic and weird ideas
 

The XYZ's are a pack species that always mate outside their packs. They have three sexes; male, female, and guardian. Each sex forms packs only with it's own kind. At mating season they are drawn to a meeting place by the emiting of sent. At this place the females lay their eggs in a pile and the males fertilize it. Then they leave. The guardians sort out the pile making sure, as much as can be that the sperm is spread equally to give as many eggs as possible a chance of being fertilized. Then they lay a secretion which hardens into a shell.
The guardians watch the eggs until the hatch, hunting for them, guarding them and feeding them by a secretion which is obsorbed through microscopic fissures in the eggs. When the hatchlings are capable of walking, the males and females come again, and the male young go with male packs, and the female with female. The guardian young join guardian packs.

Re: [Space/Aliens] Reproductive Features: alien, exotic and weird ideas
 

Weird symbiosis of wasps and viruses that allows them (both) to reproduce in a parasitoid way.

Re: [Space/Aliens] Reproductive Features: alien, exotic and weird ideas
 

Some ideas I've come across, not as freaky as some, but interesting nonetheless:

The Vau from Fading Suns are reptilian and egg laying. They have a caste system, with the catch being that each clutch contains all the castes in proportion (usually one leader, a few soldiers and lots of workers). While the castes work together a lot, a Vau always remains close to his clutchmates, so there is a lot of cross-caste interaction. Being reptilian, they probably control the caste by some element of the nest structure (varying temperature or something).

The Symbiots, from the same universe, are humans infected with an alien symbiote that gives them shapechanging abilities. They are born human, and most remain so, but the brightest, strongest and ablest are chosen to undergo symbiosis, getting infected with the symbiote which carries genetic material from one or more plant or animal species. The Symbiot develops physical and mental traits related to that species and can only bear symbiote spores after the transformation. They also become part of an empathic network. Humans from other cultures think of Symbiosis as the ultimate horror, but among Symbiots it is an honor.

Re: [Space/Aliens] Reproductive Features: alien, exotic and weird ideas
 

I read someone who said that there was a writer who made a species with seven sexes...

Re: [Space/Aliens] Reproductive Features: alien, exotic and weird ideas
 

I always liked the Clotho of Traveller as an idea. They mate fairly normally. But they are all born in a pair of mindlinked brother-sister twins, and are married one pair to another instead of one individual to another.