This serinan species from the current time period was done on commission. Email me if you have an idea you would like to see done in Serina!

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Varpikes, those predatory tribtiles which evolved in the Pangeacene, have not done well at clade level with the cooling climate at the start of the middle Ultimocene. Dropping global temperatures and the rapid loss of tropical forest communities that took tens of millions of years to evolve has meant that almost the entire group of these unusual tribbets have gone extinct... all that is, save for one.

Continuing to eke out a living in the cool forests along the equator - forests that due to their location don't have seasonal variation, but instead widely swinging day and night temperatures mirroring those on high equatorial mountains - perhaps the most unique of any of them can still be found. Small, only a little bigger than a common squirrel, with a small, floppy dorsal sail apparently no longer of any use, yet not yet fully lost, the tegzander is the last living varpike and one totally unlike any of its ancestors. Shaped by a very different climate to that they originally evolved in, to survive in a harsh environment has required these former cannibals to cooperate if they want to survive.

Whilst most varpikes relied entirely on the heat of the sun to stay active, the tegzander now remains active even in temperatures approaching freezing., yet they are not any more able to maintain a body temperate above the ambient than any other varpike could do on its own. They are very arboreal, spending most of their time in the branches of trees, and are always found in large groups. The trick to their survival in a climate that would kill most other ectotherms that tried to stay active the year-round indeed lies in these large family units; tegzanders colonize hollow trees and here form tightly-clustered aggregations known as huddles, where many individuals effectively hug one another in a ball-like formation, and shiver their muscles to collectively generate a substantial amount of body heat which is shared between them and maintained in the huddle far better than it could be by any one individual. These huddles are more efficient the more individuals they are comprised of and so there is absolutely no territorial behavior among this species; not even males fight over breeding rights, with females quite promiscuous and males simply waiting their turn to mate after their neighbors - survival in this environment, for a cold-blooded animal, is simply too reliant on cooperation for there to be any room for conflict.

Read more on the site: sites.google.com/site/worldofs…

https://www.deviantart.com/sheather888/art/The-Tegzander-The-Socially-Endothermic-Ectotherm-875191747