“What’s this YounGnat term?”, I hear you ask.

Well, it’s a pun – a play on words.

We started with Young Naturalists which can be shortened to Young Nats.

Black fungus gnat

But Nat sounds exactly like Gnat – “any small fly of the family Culicidae…” [Chambers 20th C. dictionary]. Gnats often assemble in swarms, known as ghosts, particularly at dusk. Since we’d like you to swarm about the countryside observing nature for us, Young Gnats seemed appropriate.

OK, nearly there. Young ends with a “g” and Gnats  begins with a “g” so we bolted the two words together as YounGnats.

Right, now swarm out and observe nature.

[Image via Wikimedia Commons, originally posted to Flickr by EBKauai at http://flickr.com/photos/13470115@N08/3517202763]