What happened in the sparse reef?

[Alpha393]

"Biodiversity in this region is unusually low. Cause unknown."

It looks like a dead reef to me. Probably killed by invasive spade fish, which are now starving to death, feeding the remaining shuttle bugs.
Any other theories?

[Cougarific]

We don't know much about the Sea Treaders yet (or do we? I scanned one but never read the Encyclopedia entry) but their path is pretty barren from all the trampling. Is it possible that they change their path when one path gets too beaten down? And the Sparse Reef is an ex-Sea Treader path?

[Alpha393]

Originally posted by Cougarific:

We don't know much about the Sea Treaders yet (or do we? I scanned one but never read the Encyclopedia entry) but their path is pretty barren from all the trampling. Is it possible that they change their path when one path gets too beaten down? And the Sparse Reef is an ex-Sea Treader path?

I thought about it and overall the terrain is too rough for them. They can scale small inclines well but their pathfinding sucks and they can't handle steep cliffs. Spawn one in the safe shallows to see what I mean.

[IFIYGD]

Perhaps the Sparce Reef is a singulary non productive and barren biome, because it lacks the conditions to support large populations of flora and fauna, much like the Sahara Desert, or Death Valley. Hardier creatures and plants may find small footholds there, but for some reason it lacks the needed minerals and nutrients in the soil to support lush plant life, the kind that is needed to support a large population of herbivores, which in turn means that a population of predators is not present most times.

It could be sparce because ti was decimated by earlier explorers or settlers- ( human, Precursor, Kharaa?) -who over harvested the area, and it now lies dormant, only in the beginning stages or recovery now, when we crash land on the planet. Similar areas of the Rainforest on Eearth, which one covered and estimated 14% of the planet's surface, but has now dwindled to only 6%. Mainly due to indiscriminate logging, cutting every tree down in large patches, to harvest only a slaect few valuable types, and leaving the rest laying on the ground to rot and fade back into the earth. Leaving an almost lifeless area, surrounded by areas of abundant life.

It may also be an area intentionally cleared by the Precursors, as an area they intended to build a colony, a large base or a zoo of sorts, prior to their disappearance or evacuation of the planet. Or it may be an area they terraformed, or were beginning to terraform, to creat such an area.

The possibilities are almost endless, a reason can be thought of to suit any person's point of view, mindset or bias.

I suppose we shall just have to wait and see if UWE tells us the story of how this came to be when the final version of the game is out, and we know the back story, an full story and lore of the game at that point in time. For now, we can speculate and imagine it in a way that suits us each, individually.

[Team Vladof]

Lower biodiversity can come from an invasive species decimating a lot of other species (eg: pigs introduced to Hawaiian islands). Your spadefish idea is interesting.

It could also occur from an ecosystem-wide event that obliterates a lower trophic level that upper trophic levels rely upon.

EG: if an event destroys massive amounts of live coral (which is on the bottom trophic level), then everything trickling down from it on the food chain would suffer due to lack of food... so, things that eat the coral, things that hide in the coral to keep from getting eaten, things that eat those things, etc.

A massive event that could destroy a bottom trophic level (producers) could be something that impacts the ecosystem as a whole... eg: the balance of whatever supports life in the water... perhaps a shift in oxygen to nitrogen levels pushing the ecosystem out of "range" for the base producer to survive... and everything that trickles down from it dies or clears the area due to shortage of food.

I'm actually surprised the radiation leak from the Aurora hasn't casued this very situation to occur all around it. I find it fascinating that the rate of radiation bleed from the Aurora is enough to kill the player in pretty short order, but there's still plenty of creatures cruising around it like nothing's wrong.

This could suggest some kind of freakish adaptation / acclimation ability in the creatures, whcih would mean they either evolved in an extremely harsh environment and thus evolve the ability to adapt / acclimate quickly or die, or they're genetically modified / bred to be able to withstand thigns like radiation or adapt to changes like that quickly.

Maybe Uknown Worlds put a lot of thought into this, or maybe they didn't. I approach this game the same way I approach movies... there's probably some plot holes I can shoot a cannon through, but I just take it at face value and enjoy it.

[Alpha393]

Here's another theory: the floater island lifted off from there and began its many years of drifting on the surface, leaving a huge empty space mostly robbed of nutrients, that's starting to recover.

[Meister. Yoon]

I hope but that thing at least contains tons of choral tables and choral reef things. Too less usage.

[Kurnous]

I definatly think its the sea traders. If you look at cows and other herding animals, they go where the food goes. Once a herd of cows eat all the grass in an area, the move onto the next area of grass. Also this would explain the name "trader path". The Trader path biome isn't really a path, it's more of a large network of paths. The traders go back and fourth between the biomes and that is their path. While i do agree that the sea traders couldn't scale the terrain in the sparse reef, mabey they just ate one, flat area and not the whole thing. If the traders ate one area of the biome then the rest of the biome's ecosystem would be affected. For example: If a sea trader were to eat all the vegitation in an area, the animals in that area would not have enough food and would move to the other part of the reef. The un-eaten part of the reef would become overpopulated and would further destroy the plants in that area. Once the plants died the animals would move away or die. Also, we dont have any evidence that the sea trader cannot traverse rough terrain. it could just be that the AI for walking on rough terrain has not yet been implimented, As they look like they should be able to walk up inclines due to the fact that things weigh less under water and it just makes sense.

Originally posted by Cougarific:

We don't know much about the Sea Treaders yet (or do we? I scanned one but never read the Encyclopedia entry) but their path is pretty barren from all the trampling. Is it possible that they change their path when one path gets too beaten down? And the Sparse Reef is an ex-Sea Treader path?

[Kurnous]

At this point we just don't know. I could easily be wrong as a lot of the other theorys make sense. For all we know, a giant space banana fell out of the sky and killed every one.

[Cougarific]

You rang?
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=736659243

[Alpha393]

Originally posted by Cougarific:

You rang?
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=736659243

It's.... Beautiful.

[Kurnous]

.................................................................................................................................... :)





This needs to be added to the sparse reef tommorrow

[Kurnous]

screw all the other theories, this is 100% awsome and was the reason the sparse reef has no biodiversity.
ITS NOT DIVERSE BECAUSE ITS ALL BANANA