The Search for the World’s Simplest Animal

> Trichoplax adhaerens... Named after the Greek words for “hairy, sticky plate”...

Not quite. The genus name is Greek and does, in fact, combine the stem words "hairy" and "plate." The species name is Latin and shares the same root as the English verb adhere.

Possibly of interest, there's an entire convention for valid constructions in binomial nomenclature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_nomenclature#Derivati...