Bacterium cyanus

Bacterium cyanus
Creator	Sneal
Information
Status	Extant
Zones	4, 9, 32
Roles	Decomposer
Classification
Genus	Bacterium
Species	Bacterium cyanus
Evolution
Date	February 3rd, 2019
Ancestor	Bacterium flagellus
Descendants	Bacterium defenderus Bacterium phytovora

Besides one species of Palaean, Simalgeara gastrous, and a few fish that use that species, there has been a critical lack of gut microbes. This is mostly due to a lack of microbes in general. But due to the recent rise of Synaplots, symbiotic microbes are becoming more possible- especially with parasitic ones. One of these came from a parasite of Macrognathusensis charcadontolosteus, known as Bacterium flagellus, which accidentally fell into the intestinal tract and found alot of delicious Sukapods. These microbes ended up as the ancestors of Bacterium cyanus.

The 6μm Bacterium cyanus lives in the digestional tract of M. charcadontolosteus, endlessly multiplying and finding pieces of chitin. M. charcadontolosteus cannot digest chitin, like most animals of Terra, which causes chitin to be very widespread in the tract due to half of its dietary choices being Sukapods. Bacterium cyanus, while originally not being able to digest chitin (and just ate fleshy pieces half-digested), gained a mutation that allowed it to digest the skeleton with Chitinase and gave it a unique food source. Bacterium cyanus also has evolved resistances to several dangerous enzymes, which allow it to survive not being digested. It still, however, has evolved faster multiplication rates since minor enzymes still pose a threat to it (which has been slowing down over time due to a growth of enzyme resistances.)

If chitin becomes unavailable (which in the meanwhile they'll be preying on eachother and other cells, which has caused M. charcadontolosteus to start eating more Sukapods so this doesn't happen), the cells will presume that the host has died. When it does, the bacterium will escape its host through either end and swim onto the closest prey item of M. charcadontolosteus for a ride. It will slow its metabolism to a crawl and activate when its mount is eaten, in which case it will do its normal chitin-digesting business.