#taxonomy is so weird

[local-hellhound-steals-spaghetti]

It's so hilariously American-centric to say that

This (Southern Resident)

Is a distinct species from this (Transient/Bigg's):

-

But that means that this (Bremer Canyon offshore ecotype)

is the same species as this (Type D Antarctic ecotype)

And is also the same species as this (Icelandic ecotype)

I get we have a lot of data on Residents and Transient/Bigg's but it's going to get real confusing if we start defining killer whale ecotypes as entirely different species - especially if the most distinctly different ecotypes are being ignored.

Edit: I am mostly joking here and I get that by defining them as a separate species, they could be considered more for protections like the endangered Southern Residents. However I feel like they will still be referred to as killer whales by the general public, who will be going off visual rather than the other genomic evidence provided in the paper.

It's not a huge drama, really. It's just going to be interesting to see if every ecotype is going to be given its own species classification and how that relates to the conversation about culture transmission and hybridisation in killer whales as well.

[lichenaday]

Cladonia leporina

Jester lichen

Currently yelling at my colleague about how ridiculous it is that for most of my life, I didn't *see* Cladonias, or most lichens for that matter. I, who spent so much time outside and considered myself a real student of nature never noticed them. Seriously, how was I just overlooking things like this in the world? The mind boggles. C. leporina has a fruticose thallus of widely spreading branches growing is cushions up to 5 cm tall and 10 cm wide. It is greenish-yellow in color, with a smooth, corticate (bark-like) surface. It produces bright red apothecia from the branch tips. C. leporina grows on sandy soil and wood in the southeastern USA and Caribbean islands. I understand Elton John when I look at this little guy, because honestly, how wonderful life truly is, while Cladonia's in the world.

images: source | source

info: source | source

[unpretty]

Hi I'm the person who sent the ask about using weird hypnotism porn as guided mediation. Thank you for the youtube ASMR suggestion I never thought of that because most ASMR triggers just make me uncomfortable but apparently a woman talking in a soothing voice with ambient music in the background and no other sounds also counts as ASMR somehow???

Which is actually great for me specifically but I now have a new problem: learning how to navigate the extremely strange world of youtube ASMR. What is even happening over here. Somewhere there is someone cataloguing ASMR taxonomy hell. Or if there isn't there should be.

listen. i could go the fuck on about asmr taxonomy hell. the whisperers stole 'softly spoken' and i will not stop yelling about it. there is massive overlap between asmr triggers and misophonia triggers so almost no one tags for the latter. literally with a lot of asmr triggers either they hit and you get tingles or they miss and you get viscerally uncomfortable. i feel like you could do really interesting research into that overlap and how it mirrors arousal/disgust.

my first asmr experiences were reading phrenology handbooks so 90% of all asmr videos do not trigger tingles for me at all. 'unintential asmr' and 'unintentional style' are some of the only things i can count on to indicate that there won't be whispering now that softly spoken has fallen. there's a ton of newer creators who don't actually try to trigger tingles, they're just doing horny roleplays. which is fine, more power to them, but it's making it really hard to find cyberpunk hardware inspections or whatever the fuck. i'd give you some recs but i don't know if anyone i'm into would fit what you're looking for aside from some jellybean green stuff.

if someone made some kind of web app or something that could be used as a link database with community tagging, i would use it for porn, but i would actually also use it for asmr videos because i am so tired of misophonia roulette and trying to find the specific type of exam/inspection that will trigger me 😭

[hayaniii]

yay selfship reblog game

reblog with a pic of your f/o and ill assign them a caniform!

(caniforms are "dog-like" carnivorans)

(also disclaimer that im not an expert on these)

[rotationalsymmetry]

Apparently buckwheat isn't a cereal. Isn't a grass. Isn't even close to grass. Is in the same general ballpark as carnations, cacti, and beets. Wut.

[thereareeyesinsidethetrees]

ae had no idea how many birds were passeriformes until now. turns out it's...most of them probably

[doomdoomofdoom]

I will never shut up about Monotremes being a fantastic Nonbinary analogy!!

Taxonomy is weird as shit and categories are made up, so these little weirdoes have trouble fitting into any of the categories! They lay eggs, but they're mammals, so they have mammary glands to feed their young, but also they don't have teats!

"Youre either a man or a woman, anything else is unnatural" The fucking platypus exists and I'm the weird one? Have you seen nature??

im only a man when im a grown ass man and im only a woman when god forbid women do anything

any time other than that? im a fucking Echidna

[syncarida]

Noooo Argoctenus type specimens got lost lol 😭😭😭😭 no wonder it is such a disaster

[literaticat]

If an author writes a book not knowing the genre, will the book fit into a genre when it’s finished—or is it possible for a book to be completely genre-less?

I'm about to GO OFF, so if you just want the short answer:

I presume that if an author is writing a novel and they don't have a specific genre in mind when they are doing it, they are just writing fiction. You can get more specific after you finish the book and figure out where it belongs in the bookstore and how to describe it.

It's not really possible for a book to be "completely genre-less" because that implies that it CAN'T be categorized in a bookstore -- I bet your book can be. (I should hope so, anyway, otherwise how will it sell???) -- but also, uh -- it doesn't really matter? Everyone gets really hung up on these hyper-specific genre labels, but you don't really need to get THAT specific. If your book is just "general interest fiction" that's OK -- so call it a novel and describe what the tone is. (Funny? Realistic? Literary? Fast paced? Tearjerking? There has to be some way to describe it, no? )

Even if your book is just weird as hell rambling about things I would never read about in a hundred years -- guess what, that's a genre, Experimental Fiction. ;-)

--

Long Answer: Fun fact about the word "genre" -- it comes from the same root as genus, like what you probably heard back in school when learning about the taxonomy of animals and whatnot.

Because I am extra, I decided to do a little taxonomy of books. It's still a work in progress, I might decide to change it a bit, but this is the basic chart.

I'll assume that pretty much any book we're talking about here has the same domain, kingdom, phylum and class, and PROBABLY the same order, too, since most of you are likely writing Fiction.

Within the order FICTION, there are "families", which I here call Categories -- novels, graphic novels, plays, essay collections, short story anthologies, young adult novels, young adult anthologies, middle grade novels, middle grade graphic novels, chapter books, picture books, ETC. Categories in the order NONFICTION include Biography/Memoir, Cookbook, Reference, Religion, History, Science, etc.

Within each Category, there are different Genres -- that is, the type of [novel, or whatever] it is. Genres of novel include mystery, science fiction, horror, realistic, historical, romance, western, etc.

And within each Genre, you can get even more specific with species, which I am calling subgenre/tone. That's the type of the type, in other words. There are well-established subgenres (like Horror could be slasher, or gothic, or psychological. Romance could be historical, or realistic/contemporary, or whatever) -- but it's also acceptable to get more specific with tone or style -- "Comedic", "literary", "commercial" "upmarket" etc. (You can also have books that have both subgenre AND tone -- that's like species and sub-species)

Examples:

DRACULA: ORDER: Fiction > CATEGORY: Classic Novel > GENRE: Horror > SUBGENRE/TONE: Gothic

DON'T LET THE PIGEON DRIVE THE BUS: ORDER: Fiction > CATEGORY: Picture Book > GENRE: Meta-fiction > SUBGENRE/TONE: Comedic

LINCOLN IN THE BARDO: ORDER: Fiction > CATEGORY: Novel > GENRE: Magical Realism > SUBGENRE: Experimental > TONE: Literary

JAMES: ORDER: Fiction > CATEGORY: Novel > GENRE: Historical Fiction > SUBGRENRE: Retelling > TONE: Literary

You get it?

OK SO, in the bookstore, the books are first divided by CATEGORY. All the Cookbooks are together, because that's the Category, but if there are a lot of them, they will be broken up into categories-within-the-category ("genre" if you will). Perhaps they would be grouped by region or style (Mexican cuisine, Middle Eastern cuisine, European cuisine; Health Food; Baking; etc). Mastering the Art of French Cooking would be in Cookbooks, of course -- but in a larger bookstore with many cookbooks, it would likely be found in its region, either French or European Cuisine -- and in a store with a HUGE French cooking section, those books might even be further divided into "French > classic techniques" "French > desserts" "French > postmodern cuisine", etc. So:

MASTERING THE ART OF FRENCH COOKING: Order: Nonfiction > Category: Cookbook > Genre: French > Subgenre: Classic Technique

And so it goes with Fiction as well; the sections are divided by Category. So all the Middle Grade Novels are probably together. All the Picture Books are probably together. Etc. But for very large categories (like Fiction > Novel), there are enough books that it becomes easier to browse if they give the biggest genres their own shelving. Hence there are probably sections for Mystery, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Romance, etc.

MIND YOU: There are PLENTY of books that fall under "Fiction" and DON'T get separated out into one of those other genres. They are just categorized as fiction. The fiction section is probably the largest section in most bookstores -- it's not weird to write a book that gets filed in the "fiction" section! Those books still have a genre. That genre just might be "realistic" or "historical" or "western" or magical realism" or "postmodern/experimental" or something that doesn't neatly fall into the Mystery or Science Fiction (or whatever) genre categories.

For example: At my bookstore, we ONLY separate out Mystery, Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror, Romance, Classics. So within the regular Fiction section you'll find a huge variety of books -- they all DO have a "genre" -- it just isn't one of those genres that gets shelved separately!

So, no, I don't believe there are books that just *don't have* a category or genre. ALL books have them. We might disagree a little about what they should be -- we might use slightly different words -- new species might pop up here and there -- we might be able to categorize some of them into even more minute niches -- but all books CAN be categorized in some fashion.

[lichenaday]

Montanelia panniformis

Shingled camouflage lichen

A "type species" is a species around which a new genus is based, and must represent the characteristics associated with that genus. M. panniformis is the type species for the Montanelia genus established in 1978. It is a great representative of the small lobes, clear pseudoyuphellae, and secondary metabolites associated with species of Montanelia. This foliose lichen grows on inclined, siliceous rock in boreal habitats in Asia, Europe, and North America. It has a cushiony, felty thallus up to 10 cm in diameter made up of small, crowded lobes. The upper surface is olive green-brown to red-brown in color, and the lower surface is black with dark rhizines. It only rarely produces apothecia, which are concolorous with the thallus, with a sunken disc and a papillate margin. Genetic studies have actually revealed M. pannifromis to be made up of 2 genetically distinct species, but they look so similar that they have not yet been delineated.

images: source | source | source

info: source | source | source

[thegreatfluffmuffin]

Okay im going to lose it because I looked at this bird and went, theres no way in hell its a quail, and it turns out theres a whole rabbit hole.

Quail-Plovers are Button-quail(family: Turnicidae) but are not really related to Quail(order: Galliformes), and are instead in the same order as Plovers(order: Charadiiformes).

The domestic “button quail” (Synoicus chinensis) are not actually button quail, but are called that due to their appearance. They can be more accurately called King Quail or Chinese Painted Quail.

So this domestic button quail(King Quail) are NOT Button-quail(family: Turnicidae) but are Quail(order: Galliformes).

the quail-plover is a small member of the buttonquail family found in dry regions of africa. the ‘plover’ portion of their name originates not from any close relation, but from the plover-like barred marking visible on the wing in flight. these birds are often found as individuals or in pairs, and primarily live in scrubland habitats.

[hedgehog-moss]

Pls give recommendations for Odd books 🙏

Here we go, a list of literary oddity :) This post contains majestic spheres, alien taxonomies, cruel subway polytheism, a fourth-dimensional cat, disturbing earthworms, infinite space football, existential mussel terror, a Parisian absurdist time loop, and a picture of a telegraph-pole-man-cheetah. I'm not exactly recommending these books, in the sense that I won't take any complaints if you find them more odd than good, and some of them transcend the concepts of good and bad anyway.

• The Other City, Michal Ajvaz. It's all like this:

• Contes du demi-sommeil, Marcel Béalu ('Half-asleep tales') —is the book that prompted my post about stories that have no ambition or justification beyond being odd. I'm sad that it hasn't been translated :( One of the tales is about a strange opaline sphere that rolls on the road. It doesn't accelerate when the road becomes a steep slope but continues rolling majestically. At one point it floats away towards the sky. Someone wonders if it was the moon. Someone else says authoritatively "It was an angel's egg." Everyone is reassured by this explanation. The whole thing feels exactly like remembering a dream you had. There is also a man who reads too much and whose body atrophies so only his head is left and his wife puts it in an egg cup for better stability.

• Leonora Carrington— The Skeleton's Holiday, or maybe the Hearing Trumpet. I've read them so long ago but I think the latter is the one with the old ladies and nuns? There's also a guy who was murdered in his bath by a still-life painter because he said there was a carrot in one of his paintings, but it might not have been a carrot? It's hard to remember details from this book without feeling like I might be making them up. Bonus Leonora Carrington painting which kind of feels like a short story:

• The Codex Seraphinianus, of course. I wish there were more bizarre encyclopaedias out there.

Also I love this review:

• Sleep Has His House, Anna Kavan —I really liked the way this book used language; making life feel like a fever dream even more than in Samanta Schweblin's Fever Dream (which I really liked too.)

The eye is checking a record of silence, space; a nightmare, every horror of this world in its frigid and blank neutrality. The actual scope of its orbit depends on the individual concept of desolation, but approximate symbols are suggested in long roving perspectives of ocean, black swelled, in slow undulation, each whaleback swell plated in armour-hard brilliance with the moonlight clanking along it . . .

• The second half of Michael Ende's Neverending Story, where things get stranger! I remember the hand-shaped castle with eyes and the city of amnesiac former emperors and the miserable ugly worms who cry all the time out of shame then create beautiful architecture with their tears...

• The Gray House, Mariam Petrosyan. This is the one I had in mind when I talked about a 'museum of the strange, but one you wouldn't want to be trapped in after closing time'. Another book that made me feel uncomfortable in a similar (good) way was Edward Carey's Observatory Mansions, the protagonist of which is a man who curates an odd private museum and can't stand the sight of his own hands.

• Oh, speaking of uncomfortable, and hands—He Digs A Hole, by Danger Slater. To me this book was in the more-odd-than-good category but I liked its refusal to have a coherent philosophical meaning. It's about a man who can't sleep so he goes to his garden shed and saws off his hands and replaces them with gardening tools. Then he starts digging a hole. And then it gets weird. (Read at your own discretion if you have a worm phobia; there's some body horror featuring sexually aggressive earthworms. And then it gets disturbing.)

• 17776 — Someone sent me an ask a few years back to recommend this online multimedia narrative to me and I really enjoyed it! Here's the summary, borrowed from the wiki page: Set in the distant future in which all humans have become immortal and infertile, the series follows three sapient space probes that watch humanity play an evolved form of American football in which games can be played for millennia over distances of thousands of miles. The work explores themes of consciousness, hope, despair, and why humans play sports.

• Saint-Glinglin, Raymond Queneau —the author admitted that this book presents some "internal discontinuities." I didn't like it much but I respect the talent it takes to write a novel where everything feels like a random digression, including the key suspenseful scene that matters to the plot. The one digression I loved had to do with the way the narrator is existentially horrified by various sea creatures. It's like he dreads them so much he can't help but think about them when he should be telling a story.

The oyster... This gob of phlegm, this brutal way of refusing the outside world, this absolute isolation, and this disease: the pearl... If I conceptualise them even a little, my terror starts anew. The mussel is even more significant than the oyster and even more immediately admissible in the domain of terror. Let us indeed consider that this little sticky mass whose collective stupidity haunts our piers, consider that it is alive in the same way as a cow. Because there are no degrees in life. There is no more or less. The whole of life is present in every animal. To think that the mussel, that the mussel has, not a conscience, but a certain way of transcending itself: here I am once again plunged into abysses of anxiety and insecurity.

Near the beginning he philosophises about what would happen if a man and a lobster were the only two survivors of the apocalypse. The lobster would break the man's toe and the man would say, "We are the only beings that remain on this devastated Earth, lobster! The only living beings in the universe, struggling alone against the universal disaster, don't you want to be allies?" But the lobster would disdainfully walk away towards the ocean, and "the sight of the inflexible and imperturbable lobster pierces the sky of humanity with its unintelligible claws." (I can't overstate how little this has to do with the rest of the book.)

• Autumn in Beijing, Boris Vian —needless to say the story does not take place in autumn nor in Beijing.* To the extent that it can be said to be "about" something, it's about people trying to build a train station in a desert with tracks that lead nowhere. (I just went on goodreads to check the title, and it's actually called Autumn in Peking in English. I also discovered that it was featured in a list of Books I Regret Reading. I liked this book, but I understand.)

(* French writers love doing this—like when Alphonse Allais said about his 1893 book The Squadron's Umbrella "I chose this title because there aren't any umbrellas of any sort in this volume, and the important notion of the squadron, as a unit of the armed forces, is never brought up at all; in these conditions, hesitating would have been pure madness.")

• The Library at Mount Char, Scott Hawkins—I fear this one makes a little too much sense for this list, but you can't say it isn't weird; and I loved it and recommend it any chance I get.

• The Eleven Million Mile High Dancer, Carol Hill —this book was so wacky and made me laugh. I've not yet managed to successfully recommend it to someone; its brand of odd didn't resonate with the people I know who've read it but that's okay. You could say it's about a woman astronaut whose weird cat disappears into the fourth dimension (or the quantum realm?) and she goes to space to save him—but that makes the book sound more straightforward and less messy than it is. Her cat leaves her a note before he disappears:

• The Bald Soprano, Ionesco —fun fact, there's a tiny theatre in the Latin Quarter in Paris where this absurdist play has been staged every night for nearly 70 years, with the exact same set design and costumes and everything, like the actors are stuck in a time loop. They celebrated the 20,000th performance this year! There's an actress who has been playing her character for 40 years and said joining this theatre was like joining a religion. I've been going to see this play as a New Year tradition with my best friend since we were 14, so I love it madly, though I wouldn't say it's good, necessarily—the author said it was about "absolutely nothing, but a superior nothing."

• Statuary Gardens; or Les Mers perdues (apparently not translated) by Jacques Abeille. This man is obsessed with weird statues. Unfortunately I find his writing style rather dull—I feel like he takes strange ideas and makes them feel mundane in a bad way...! But his books still have a nice, quiet, oneiric atmosphere, and images that stayed with me, like a solitary gardener trying to grow stone statues in the depleted soil of a walled garden. Here are some illustrations from the second one:

I'll look into some of the books recommended on my previous post! (and I agree with the people who brought up Cortázar, Borges, and Junji Ito. <3) Some potentially-odd books I have on my to-read list: Clive Barker's Abarat, Goran Petrović's An Atlas Traced by the Sky, Salvador Plascencia's The People of Paper, Jean Ray's Malpertuis; Jan Weiss's The House of a Thousand Floors; Brice Tarvel's Pierre-Fendre.

[rotationalsymmetry]

Happy/spooky Friday everyone.

Obviously I'm sad about the long days getting shorter and summer fruit season slowly drawing to a close, but there are compensations. Like PERSIMMONS!!!

(happy it's persimmon season dance.)

Not only are persimmons delicious, but they are also in the order ericales in the...taxonomic category*...asterids, which you can vote for (or against) in the @plant-taxonomy-showdown bonus round semi-finals which will almost certainly start later today! So, keep your eyes peeled!

But your persimmons don't have to be!

*the correlation between traditional linean categories and actually useful categories is a bit hit or miss.

[bogleech]

I really wonder exactly how Japan became seemingly the most creature obsessed culture on earth. Everybody has a mythology of spirits and beasts to some extent but in decades of my hyperfixation on monsters all over the globe I'm forced to concede that no surviving culture has so enthusiastically kept such a huge volume of their weird guys as widely relevant in the public eye as Japan has with youkai, let alone gone on to make such a high density of modern monster media including several of the most globally successful franchises on earth.

Mizuki Shigeru (Gegege no Kitaro) is popularly credited with having personally "saved" youkai culture from relative obscurity, but while the success of his work definitely had (still has) a massive snowball effect I still don't think that answers the whole question. The Kaiju genre for instance feels fairly independent of the sudden youkai craze associated with Kitaro. I guess there's probably a whole lot of factors that just perfectly came together.

I mean they even seem to think about *animals* more than is usual around the world, more than just pets and livestock and as more than just kid stuff. Their public education system spends evidently more time going over biology, taxonomy and evolution than that of many other countries, what's with that? I don't care about the anime and maid cafe tourist crap I just want to know why the rest of us are so behind Japan in appreciating varmints and critters.

[velvetwyrme]

hello! biologist here :] I love cybugs a lot, and wanted to say your taxonomy is pretty good. It can be an absolute pain to tackle for speculative projects and you are applying it to tiny vehicle people. My heart goes out to you

I'm no entomologist but there are a few terms that might help with cybug classification. Subspecies usually applies to somewhat minor differences in a species that typically don't live in the same area, where the subspecies interbreeding creates offspring with a mix of both parent's traits. For the seekers though there's also such a thing as morphs and breeds. Morphs of the same species can appear very different physically from the wildtype (like glaucus tiger swallowtails) and offspring will either have the morph of their parents or present wildtype. Breeds on the other hand are a lot like subspecies but imply human selection. They can interbreed and the result could be either like a morph or a subspecies depending on the genes involved.

(didn't expect to be sending an ask about breeding seekers on a Friday morning, but here we are)

As for Jeetle a better word than subspecies would probably be caste/sub-caste. A queen/worker/drone is a caste, while differences between workers is called a subcaste. If a colony needs more protectors -> chemical signals or special foods can alter grub development. (Though, if there is no physical change only a behavioral one, it might not even be considered a subcaste, it might just be a Job. Like honey bees have.)

And usually with mimics, the better of a mimic they are the less likely theyre a subspecies and the more likely they're their own species. That's never a certainty though and bug genetics are weird. Heck, a mimic could even end up being just a morph. It happens in butterflies (like with the dark swallowtails)

Sorry for the word wall 🙏 Hope you're having a great day and thank you for bug

*nods and takes notes* !!!!!

I LOVE THE WALL OF TEXT :DD thank you so much for your input as a biologist, its very fun learning things <3333

Also, image comparison of the mentioned tiger swallowtails and the different morphs for others who are interested:

(source // A is a male with standard colouration, B is a female with the darker morph [a mimic!], and C is a female with the yellow [non mimicking] morph!)

I've mentioned elsewhere that I've been using "subspecies" as more of an easily understood shorthand (essentially just. [subcategory of "species"/larger grouping that can interbreed*] ...as such, the somewhat inaccurate usage at times. i try not to think too hard about it >>) which is why after getting that ask I was like. huh. I wonder what the actual taxonomy would look like... and now I'm here :^]

*as far as I'm aware, animals of the same genera can also interbreed but their resulting offspring are considered hybrids and/or tend to run into issues with being infertile? idk, i know a more abt breeding plants LMAO. plant hybridization is pretty common!

but yes!! onwards! taxonomy chatter under the cut.

For Readability purposes there are headers.

SEEKERS

👀!! Seekers having different morphs and breeds...

There's been mention of Thundercracker being a domesticated Seeker cybug (i agree!!) so that's interesting to think about that in context of breeds having a human influence... Seekers like TC are bred to be bigger and more easy to handle, with focus on large, pretty wings and bright colours...

I did consider the fact that one of the criteria for subspecies is that they are geographically distinct (e.g. the Bengal tiger vs the Siberian tiger) and when I was making my taxonomy chart I was actually debating shifting Seekers category-wise (either up to genus, or down to subspecies) which also got me thinking about breeds when writing that other post (as such, the debate of shifting Seeker to subspecies**) but forgot to mention it because researching the differences between how species/subspecies/breeds are defined was making my head spin and I gave up on taxonomy GDKFBSK,,

(**Like domestic dogs and cats!! I think they're currently taxonomically defined as their own subspecies (?) but some people still argue that they are their own species...? taxonomy </3)

As for Starscream and Skywarp, I was thinking that Skywarp is uh. very very far from his typical environment (whereas Starscream is native to this region), which is why I was considering whether or not subspecies would be actually applicable here... buuuut also there's inherently something very funny to me thinking about Skywarp being the "goth" morph thskfhfkfndb,,,

I'm still not entirely sure where they actually would fit in taxonomically, but thinking of the variation in Seekers like how different breeds of dog exist is the most accurate :] (although without specifically a human influence in many cases. While Starscream and Skywarp may seem feral, that implies previous domestication– *i am forcibly shunted into the next section*)

PROWL / PEETLE

OOOH... caste/subcaste is the word I was looking for for sure!! In Prowl's case there are physical differences, but just not as obviously dramatic as solider ants :D! Enforcers tend to have different colour schemes (black and white, with blue and/or red highlights) as well as the addition of sirens and lights. I also think they'd have thicker armour and sharper chevrons!

AND YESS... chemical signals/differing food alters grub development!!!! I also hinted at that in my notes here!!

Colonies will increase the amount of Enforcers if under strain (much like many irl ant colonies do) >:3c

Playing with specbio in terms of funny little bug robots that also. turn into vehicles allows for some leeway in terms of realism (for. obvious reasons) but I like rooting some aspects in reality where I can :D! (also presumably obvious, considering I tried to work out potential taxonomy largely unprompted)

(SLIGHT SPOILER FOR UPCOMING STUFF, skip next paragraph if you don't want to know)

That being said, I don't think that the process (of defining caste within a colony) can be stopped once it's started in irl cases, buuuut imo that's why The Grub will look so similar to Prowl colour-wise once they pupate :] They were originally going to be an Enforcer (caused by colony under stress) but since they got taken in by J+P they got a little mixed up and don't end up as an Enforcer, despite looking the part (Monochrome sorta colours, but no sirens/lights)

SPOILERS OVER

JAZZ / JEETLE

I waffled over where to put Mimics the most LMAO. I also considered categorising them under being their own species, but ended up sticking with subspecies at the time because I imagine that they can interbreed with others of their frametype.

HOWEVER now you've brought up morphs... that probably fits what's going on with Jazz the most! Maybe? He's meant to be mimicking the general look of an Enforcer just at a glance. I imagine he's got the ability to mimic their sirens as well, but that's probably more of an overall species thing where they can mimic sounds (like some birds can).

anyhow. TAXONOMY. YAY. im not going to remake my diagram (... yet) but thank you so much for your input and discussion <33!!

[seat-safety-switch]

In order to stay relatable, I like to figure out what the average person hates so I can hate it too. Taxes are always popular, but for some reason people get tired of listening to me when I start discussing the specific methodologies of estimating land value, and how it should really not include properties with several broken Mopars to be "valuable." So I have to figure out some alternatives. The weather, the local sports team, and weeds.

Weeds, you ask? Weeds, I reply. In my idyllic-if-you-squint neighbourhood, there is a secret battle being fought beneath all of our feet. Brave suburbanite warriors struggle valiantly to keep plants they don't want from growing in between the plants they do want. It doesn't help that the former plants are really good at growing, and the latter are simply not. Seems unfair to me, but so is a lot of life, so I got a book from the public library and started boning up on my weeds.

Friends, it turns out that you can bury yourself into an infinitely deep taxonomy of various plants that are distinguishable only by the slightest feature. And all of those plants are greatly undervalued by society. Just like owning Malaise Era Mopars. I was hooked. Suddenly, I found myself walking around my neighbourhood, stopping to gaze at the specific varieties of dandelion, thistle, weird lumpy thing, and Sow's Murderess that dotted the environs.

And yet, despite my greater knowledge, success in social interaction still refused to come. In fact, I now have even greater friction with local by-law, because it turns out they really don't like it when you argue that your property isn't "overgrown with weeds" but instead temporarily colonized by a variety of pollinator-friendly invasive species that the city themselves put there a hundred years ago. I made the lawn-control lady so mad that she drove into a lamp post peeling out of my driveway.

There is good news, though. What was left of her city-allocated Dakota provided a pretty decent 5.2 for my stricken Valiant, and doing the swap immediately raptured me back from caring about all those dumb plants. Thanks, hyperfixation.