The bugs will be called "mutts". Exactly the kind of thing I would expect from Foel -- so goofy it's sort of charming. It's short for "mutomorphic mesoclade". Mesoclade is the awful term for the ecological niche that tends to filled by a large, diverse group of organisms of somewhat middling complexity. It at least describes something that seems to be real. So far in every ecosystem with multicellular creatures (well, nearly) there's this vast group that covers a certain middle range; that would be arthropods and more specifically insects on Earth. Of course it's so vague a definition that Prof. da-Milliband called it "anything large enough to see with the naked eye and small enough to hold between thumb and forefinger."
The "mutomorphic" part is the interesting science. I've only skimmed Wald & Foel's paper and footnotes, but it appears that variation in limb configuration and even limb count is the norm for members of the same species, even among offspring of the same parent. The sample collection programs had been trying to separately catalog morphologically different specimens and the algorithms were going nuts, but once Camil's group had cracked the crazy genetics it was clear these different looking bugs were basically all the same common fly. Excuse me: these different looking mutts.
It's a remarkable adaptation and a great discovery. It make take years to fully understand how it works, but that's what we're here for. I have a greater admiration and wonder for the mutts buzzing against my hab tonight.
On a related note, ti-Singh needled me about names again. I know he doesn't mind writing "DAF", and he has no room in his bureaucratic heart for anything as romantic as imbuing meaning to the parts of a new world. I can only imagine that it's something on a checklist somewhere and it bothers him that he can't check it off.
Let him wait. I'll listen to the mutts tonight, and drink in the mystery of their impossible genes.
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