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So I'm working on preliminary descriptions for next gen and while working on an evolution of the Chainswarmers, I ran into an unusual issue--I have no idea what terms to use to refer to some of its body parts.

Most real-life zoons like siphonophores are fairly simple, having a single zooid type dedicated to each function and only a few of those per colony. But I'm being a little more experimental and developing more complicated "tissues" and "organs" made of hundreds, even thousands of zooids of multiple types working together. The most complex thing in the specific submission I am working on is its gonads, which have two zooid types, but I will be increasing its complexity as I evolve it further.

Is there a term for "tissues" and "organs" that are made of zooids instead of cells? The placeholder term I'm currently using is "superorgan", but it feels wrong.

This post has been edited by Disgustedorite: Jul 16 2020, 11:16 AM

That does pose an interest question. Biology to my knowledge does really have a term individual organisms actioning as an organ within a superorganism. The best I can think to do at the moment is to create an in-house term for us to use until we get a proper term.

I propose something like “organone” as the term, as organelle is modified with a diminutive -elle, -one is an augmentative.

That would make sense. But what happens if something goes further, say the already-colonial superorganism forms colonies with other superorganisms and then they make organs?

This post has been edited by Disgustedorite: Jul 16 2020, 05:26 PM

Supraorganones?