concept

Autogenic engineer

An ecosystem engineer whose own living body is the change it makes to the world. A beaver has to fell trees and build a dam — that is allogenic. Corals, kelp and trees build nothing: they simply grow, and the resulting mass of living tissue becomes the shade, the humidity, the surfaces and the cavities everything else depends on. It is not a service the organism performs. It is what a large amount of wood standing in one place for centuries does.