Behind the glass

A little world.
A lot to understand.

Pocket Terrarium is an iOS-first project about creating, caring for, and understanding a small living world.

We are studying how plants, inhabitants, water, light, and decomposing matter affect one another. The goal is a beautiful world with understandable behavior—not a claim that an entire ecosystem has already been solved.

What you can explore today

The homepage runs our actual planted-vessel renderer in your browser. You can orbit the glass and change its display lighting. It is an initial-state visual study, not a persistent terrarium, a complete food web, or evidence of biological accuracy. The site adapts the camera and lighting for presentation.

The fly remains a candidate inhabitant under separate development. It is not connected to the scene you see here.

Research we are building from

• Terrariums · University of Missouri Extension
  Plant compatibility, container types, and practical care. Horticultural guidance, not simulation validation.
• Microclimate modeling · NicheMapR
  Heat, water, and radiation. Adapting an outdoor model to an enclosed vessel still needs testing.
• Modeling plant development · Algorithmic Botany
  Methods for plant structure and growth. Convincing geometry is not the same as calibrated physiology.
• The soil food web · National Park Service
  A useful introduction to soil communities, with an arid-land context rather than a terrarium species recipe.

How we will judge progress

Research evidence, simulation checks, and biological validation are different things. Organism interactions need their own evidence: who consumes what, under which conditions, and where the material and energy go. We will keep unknowns visible rather than label every attractive render “realistic.”

Each site render is pinned to a source snapshot. A new checkpoint does not automatically publish a new biological claim.