One of the more practical surprises in later colony engineering was that some reptile-derived biological systems outperformed mammalian ones under repeated radiation exposure. This did not make them universally superior. It made them unusually useful in the specific environments where exposure, recovery time, and mission endurance mattered more than general adaptability.
That distinction is important because biohybrid work was never about copying biology for its own sake. Koblie integrated biological systems where they improved a real operational constraint. In radiation-heavy colonies, the useful constraint was survival under stress.
The advantage came with a price. Reptile-derived systems tended to demand tighter thermal control and more stable climate bands if they were going to function well over time. A colony that could not keep those environmental conditions disciplined often lost the very advantage it was trying to gain.
This is why the branch became associated with more mature or more tightly managed colonies. The biology survived radiation better, but only the infrastructure could make that survival meaningful.