I love how a lot of family names are just silly little names like grubdog and breadbug, then you have the Scarab Beetle family which literally gets its name from a creature in the real world

As a biologist (a zoologist more specifically), it makes me so happy seeing Pikmin give so many people an interest in biology and taxonomy! I'm making my own hypothetical cladogram of everything in Pikmin 4's piklopedia, glad I'm not the only one who likes using fictional taxonomy as a brain teaser.

The Mamutas are probably a branch of mammals that split off from all other mammals before they even had evolved

small note:

Pikmin 4’s lore on the cannon beetle/larva is crazy. Armored Cannon Beetles and Horned Beetles are 2 different things: but also they cross bread with each other

I get the sense that the Piklopedia is NOT that accurate. It's pretty clear that the Bulborbs aren't terribly speciated. Larvae, Albino Dwarf, Russus and Empress are all the same species pretty clearly, with Russus (Red, Spotted Bulborb) male specimens capable of transforming into Empress Bulblax with the right conditions. This tidbit in the Pikmin 2 'pedia tells us a few things, like how Empress and Red Bulborb are the same species, and also that the scientific names provided do not fit actual taxonomy, with many bulborb and blax variations being subspecies, breeds, sexes or stages of life, rather than distinct species.

I love this, Pikmin is the only franchise where I will manually search up taxonomy for.

I know that the vanilla and queen Shearwigs have different scientific names, but there's no reason for that so just clump them together

The Fact: In Korean Version Of Pikmin 4, Pikmins And Creeping Chrysanthemum Family Are Both Has Same Clade Named "보근류" on Olimar's Creeping Chrysanthemum Note

I can see your rationale with the armoured crawmad but that many legs absolutely cannot be a reptile

This is so cool, you should totally make one with pikmin 4 enemies too