the.com/microarthropod

means A tiny arthropod — mites, springtails, and their kin — small enough to live between soil particles or in the microscopic landscape of skin and fur.

from Built from Greek parts: 'mikros' (small) plus 'arthropod' itself a 19th-century scientific coinage from 'arthron' (joint) and 'pous/podos' (foot) — so literally 'small jointed-foot creature.' The compound is a modern scientific label, assembled by biologists to name a size class rather than a single discovery, so its 'story' is really the quiet bureaucratic habit of taxonomy: Greek roots recombined whenever science needs a new, precise box to put something in.