Why are slimes placed as an early branch off of the kingdom Animalia?Ā
Slimes are enigmatic. Taken at face value, they could fit anywhere or nowhere in the tree. They tick all of the boxes required to be defined as an animal, but donāt closely resemble any real phylum, though they do bear some resemblance to certain basal animal groups such as ctenophores and cnidarians.Ā
Why is the elytra branching off from the insects?
The word elytra refers to the hard wings of beetles. This is where beetles would be placed on the tree.
Why is the shulker a mollusk?
Itās a shelled invertebrate - anything beyond this is unclear. It has a pair of shells like a bivalve, but could belong to any of a number of different related groups.Ā
Why is the sea pickle so close to vertebrates?
The sea pickle is either based on a real life sea cucumber (an echinoderm), or a sea pickle (a tunicate). Either way, both of these groups are deuterostomes, which means they, like us, develop their anus before their mouth. Yeah.Ā
Why are guardians labeled as manufactured?
Itās an idea Iām not totally sold on, but a theory nevertheless. It has been posited that guardians were created to guard underwater monuments and are not actually animals. I am of the opinion that if this is the case, they are still at least partially biological, as they do drop edible raw fish. In this case, they likely represent a lineage of jawless fish comparable to real life ostracoderms that was further modified for their role as temple guardians.Ā
Why are the dragon and sniffer related? Why do they branch off the tree so early?
Both are 6 limbed, meaning they are not tetrapods, the group which includes all real terrestrial vertebrates. Instead, they may represent a different lineage of fishes which separately developed a third limb girdle and then followed a line of parallel evolution with the tetrapods. This is comparable to the various invasions of land by arthropods, in which arachnids, myriapods and insects separately evolved mechanisms of terrestrialization while also convergently evolving many of the same structures as each other.Ā
Arenāt creepers described as āplant-like?ā Why are they included with the vertebrates?
They have indeed often been described as plant-like by various developers. It is my belief that they are vertebrates with a symbiotic relationship with some form of plant, probably a moss. This is why they are also included in Bryophyta on the other side of the tree. All promotional merchandise that shows creeper internal anatomy shows the presence of bones and the general anatomy reflects a familiar yet distorted version of the common tetrapod body plan. They do not share much in common with either reptiles or mammals, and so I split them off early in the vertebrate portion of the tree. While creepers share a developmental history with pigs, they do not actually bear any synapomorphies to suggest this relationship is canon, and so I chose not to place them nearby.Ā
Why are phantoms reptiles?
Iām honestly not sure what else they could be. The underside of the texture reminds me of the plastron of a turtle, though the wings are arguably more bat-like than anything else. Phantoms are all undead and their living version is likely now extinct, so we canāt fully understand the anatomy they would have had.Ā
Why are striders synapsids? What is a synapsid?
Synapsids are mammals and their extinct, reptile-like ancestors. Striders have hair, like living mammals, but otherwise share very little with modern mammals, suggesting they split off early in synapsid evolution.
What is the warden/sculk?
I donāt know. Itās very purposefully the most alien life in Minecraft. Most realistically, I think itās not from the overworld at all. However, thatās not really in the spirit of this project. Therefore, I hypothetically place it as a fungus, as fungi are capable of the sprawling growth in dark environments and possible parasitism in the case of the warden itself.Ā
Why are blazes labeled as āmanufactured?ā
I havenāt got a clue what blazes could be. Are they sentient fire? Are they living creatures that mimic fire? Who knows. I finally ended up considering them to be something akin to vexes or golems - summoned by someone or something to guard nether fortresses, rather than naturally evolved creatures. This is actually supported by a really old (and likely since retconned) article from the Minecraft website. https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/article/visit-nether-Ā
Why is glow lichen connected to two separate branches?
Because lichen is a symbiotic structure formed by both algae and fungi!
Why are chorus plants where they are?
They are angiosperms, meaning they bear flowers and fruit, but do not have the characteristics of either of the more derived major lineages of flowering plants.
Why are dripleaf plants alismatales?
To me, they bear a great resemblance to members of the arum family, such as elephant ear plants, arrowhead plants, and Monstera.Ā
Torchflower?
It bears greatest resemblance to bromeliads, a group of plants related to grasses.
Why is the spore blossom placed where it is?
The spore blossom is another anomalous species. If āsporeā is taken seriously, it must be a fern. However, ferns donāt have flowers, so I assumed the spores are actually just pollen. I placed it as a dicot based on the fact that dicots typically have flowers with 4-5 petals, while monocots have flowers with petals in multiples of 3.Ā
Why arenāt vines and glow berry vines placed together?
The āvineā form has evolved dozens of times in separate lineages of plants, just like the ātreeā form. It alone is not enough to indicate a close relationship. I tentatively placed vines where the grape family would go, and placed the glow berries where staff vines (Celastrus) should be.Ā
Why arenāt dead bushes grouped with sweet berry bushes and azaleas?
Like vines and trees, ābushā is a description of a body form and not an evolutionary group. I depicted the dead bush as a real form of desert bush, a tumbleweed, specifically the Russian thistle, a common tumbleweed in the order Caryophyllales.
Sweet berries, on the other hand, are most likely based on lingonberries, a commonly grown crop in Sweden, where Mojang is based. These belong to the order Ericales along with azaleas, as well as many other common plants not yet represented in the game such as blueberries and cranberries.Ā
Pitcher plants are real - why isnāt there a āconfirmedā lineage on the tree?
Pitcher plants have evolved several times in different lineages, and there is no clear indication which ones the ones in Minecraft are. In fact, most likely, the Minecraft pitcher plants donāt belong to any real group of pitcher plants, as none of these produce āpodsā nor do they have similar leaves. However, the most likely candidates are the family Nepenthaceae (order Caryophylalles) or the family Sarraceniaceae (order Ericales).