Badarian Fly

Among the many differences between Earth and Mars is that what can colloquially be referred to as an “insect” is much more straightforward on one planet than on the other. Powered flight has evolved on our planet only four times and only once among the invertebrates, and once the insects made this important step, they occupied every niche available to flying animals their size. In contrast, the organisms that an average layperson might refer to as “Martian insects” can come from vastly different backgrounds, attesting to a long forgotten time when the air was thicker, evolving flight was as easy as going back in the water and vast swarms of aeroplankton made up large parts of the global ecosystem. Among the red planet’s small to microscopic flying organisms, one may find wadjets, the larvae of shellubim, spring-tailed furchordatans and even hummingbird-sized ballousaurs and pedicambulates, which parasitically feed on the blood of larger Martians. But most prominent (behind the wadjets and aeroplanktonic larvae) are the nekhbets, a group of tiny archaeocephalians.

 

 

Most iconic of this group, for it is encountered the most across the Martian shrublands, is Paradipterosaurus ranamusca, commonly known as the badarian fly. In it we can also observe the basic bodyplan of this clade, though it has become quite abstract in more derived members. As we can see, having evolved from a six-legged ancestor (perhaps an early stultusaur or maybe even something more ancient), nekhbets developed a unique arrangement wherein the front and back limbs became wings while the centre pair retained their walking function. The spine between these sections is largely stiffened and inflexible. As with the ballousaurs, who evolved their wings out of their hindlegs, this seems quite silly at first. One would think that the “draconic” configuration, wherein the middle-limbs become the wings, would be easier and more practical to evolve, but observation has shown that this four-winged form comes with many advantages which allows the organims a stable, controlled and flexible flight, somewhat akin to what is seen in some man-made drones. Indeed, it seems to have been a winning strategy, for the only “draconic”-winged onychognaths were a short-lived group of tagmasaurs that went extinct at the end of the Isidian, while nekhbets thrive until modern day.

The badarian fly buzzes through the shrublands, its long neck curled up and its legs tucked in, using its painted tail for manoeuvring while on the search for succulent young fractarian fronds. When found, the beetle-sized animal uses its tiny cheliceres to gnaw into the “plants”, feeding on the soft, jellicious tissues and sucking up any available liquid. A single fly is often too small to cause significant damage, but in groups or swarms they can become a serious threat to the organisms’ health. Many fractarians have thus evolved defences against this and other small, flying herbivores, such as bristles, hardened cuticles, deadly toxins, suffocating sap or even venomous needle-hairs. Some arephytes, who may also fall victim to this pharaonic plague, have gone one step further and became carnivorous, much in the fashion of the sundew. With the spongisporians, the badarian fly and other nekhbets share a more positive relationship. They will often inhabit the porous bodies of these sponge-like organisms, perhaps feeding them in turn through their excrements.

The badarian fly is among the many areozoans who annually migrate to the great tundra in the south, when the summer sun thaws the top-layer of the permafrost and makes the red fronds spring back to life. Although practicing internal fertilization, most nekhbets lay their unshelled eggs in the spring bogs and ponds that form here, similar to other archaic onychognaths. These eggs hatch first into eel-like larvae, feeding on microscopic water-flora, which then grow six long, webbed, almost frog-like limbs. As they mature, the external gills in the armpits of these "tadpoles" invaginate and become book-lungs. The webbing on the front- and hindlimbs stiffens into a tough membrane, while it disappears on the middle pair. Eventually they crawl out of the drying bogs and fly away to the north. While Haeckel's old axiom of "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" is not as true as we once thought it was, we may glean from this metamorphosis an insight into how these extraordinary onychognaths may have evolved in the eldest of days.