Arms Race

Not exactly a cladogram, but a graphic depicting some of the primary crustaceaform body types and anatomical features of the transhuman bioroid/myoborg "Arthropeople" ancestral to the Amphipeople and Stomatopeople (q.v.). Though there isn't a single unified "evolutionary" lineage for these guys, the arrangement of the images here, bottom to top, very loosely parallels their design history, with the development of the mantis and stomatopod arms and "flippers" on the left and the development of the multipedal body forms on the right. Of course there was a huge amount of overlap, exchange, and convergence in these different design variants before they were ever subject to the true evolutionary pressures of natural selection in their adopted extrasolar environments.

thomastapir.deviantart.com/gal…

I should again note that at least some of these bodies may have been designed to be "worn" and controlled temporarily and/or remotely by conventional human operators. All of them were originally developed for aquatic and amphibious warfare on high-gravity "super Earth" worlds.

Please see also



artapir.tumblr.com/post/172506…