T.Attwood wrote...
I personally haven't seen much info regarding Rannoch (I think a screen-shot or concept art exists somewhere, but that is about it).
(Based on only a limited knowledge, and logical assumptions) I don't think a lack of insect life would change things all that much.
Well, humans have a hard time seeing past their own wee-wees and the swinging of said wee-wees, but plants are slightly more hyper-important to life on this planet than we are. They have shaped animal life to astounding degrees, in many instances plants have
directed insect evolution, down to points where some plants and insects are so specialized they cannot survive without each other. Rain forests are the lungs of Earth, and produce the majority of the oxygen we breathe. They were colonizing the surface of this planet almost half-a billion years before animal life showed up - and the first land animals
were insects. That primal relationship drives all animal life on this planet - down to our own food sources. Any animal that needs to take over that symbiosis is going to change in significant ways, given enough time.
I see insects as purely another organism. Plants can't move around like limbed creatures, and so need help in the form of pollenation from another organism as their way of sexual reproduction.
True and true, unless Rannochian plants can get about on their own - and Earth flora
can actually move - just not quickly. But then, if you don't
need to rush, why would you?
I think as long as some method exists for this, (maybe even Quarian's themselves perform the task indirectly as a carrier for pollen), then bees (or other insects) don't have to exist.
Well, without insect life from the get-go, there'd be nothing indirect about the quarians' part in pollination. Either they are very late arrivals in Rannoch's animal evolution (
not impossible, given their penchant for being allergic to pretty much everything - even on Rannoch), or they are essential to the process. Personally I'm leaning to the "late-to-the-game" myself.
However, there are a few problems with this: insects provide a source of food for larger organisms. Simply removing them has an effect on the food chain (It would be interesting to see how this is coped with on Rannoch).
Indeed. The insect niche could be taken up by small creatures - mice or shrew -sized creatures that are responsible for the majority of pollination, and are a primary food source for other animals. Quarians could also eat them, and they could still be useful to the plants by doing what birds and herbivores do on Earth with ingested seeds. Of course, if quarians are more lizard-like (
give them a tail and them hips make more sense - think velociraptor-like), then they might possibly be more about small-critter-eating and less about pollination.
Also, (as someone pointed out to me a while ago) bee's use pollen as food, and so this limits the size of anything that uses pollen, as their food source is limited.
True, but pollen is a high-energy food, and when both your body and brain are tiny, you don't need the all-beef patties and deep-fried butter.
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