#subspecies
The Key deer (Odocoileus virginianus clavium), the smallest North American deer, lives only in the Florida Keys. It is a subspecies of the white-tailed deer (O. virginianus). Key deer easily swim between islands. Living close to humans, they have little of the natural fear of man. The deer are often found in residents’ yards and along roadsides where plants and flowers grow.
Key deer buck and doe
A plethora of pilot whales
The alliterations continue, as well as the uploading of illustrations from last year’s two big project. This time, pilot whales. A big and impressive relative of the killer whale, which come in two species: the Long-finned (Globicephala melas) and Short-finned (Globicephala macrorhynchus). Ironically pectoral fin length isn’t always a good identifier, but shape is a good call: in Short-fins the pectoral fins have a continuous sickle shape, whereas in Long-fins the pectoral fins have a single bend, and then taper out very straight.
Within the species there is diversity too. Long-finned pilot whales are the colder water species of the two, and thus their range is divided into a northern and southern population. Northern animals are quite plain black aside from the white anchor marking on their chest and belly. However Southern animals bear very striking white eye- and saddle patches, a bit reminiscent of killer whales.
Short-finned pilot whales live in warmer waters and Japanese fishermen had long known of two different types. Recent research showed these to be two distinct global subspecies: the “Shiho” form, living mostly in the Eastern Pacific but also off Northern Japan, and the “Naisa” form, living in the rest of the Pacific Ocean, as well as the Indian and Atlantic. They can be told apart by their saddle patch: the Naisa form has a long saddle patch reaching almost the end of the peduncle, whereas the Shiho form has a very short one. I only illustrated Naisa animals, but all pilot whales currently living at Seaworld are of the Shiho form and you can see the difference in saddle patch length.
Within the Naisa form there’s yet more differences. In the Pacific and Indian Ocean, Naisa’s have very muted colouration, as shown by the bottom illustration. It can be hard to even spot their saddle patches at all! However Atlantic animals are very brightly coloured with beautiful creamy markings sweeping up from behind their eye and into their prominent saddle patches.
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A subspecies of Gammoth found in the Elder’s Recess. It adorns itself in lava, having precise control over the temperature of its molten armor to either burn or batter opponents.
And a recolor of the previous icon for a fan-made subspecies, Basalt Gammoth. I will eventually illustrate this in full.
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Lux’s species the Ezenians are a homebrew race with a few subspecies, more under the cut.
The Ezenian are a homebrew race of aquatic humanoids hailing from a hidden planetary system. Their dense muscles and prehensile tentacle hair makes them a fearsome predator both on land and sea. On their oceanic worlds, their societies are militant and obsessed with perfection, so their species prides itself on the advancements it makes. They worship the stars and planets with their governmental system revolving around triumvirate of the religious, military and civilian leaders
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