The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 17 Ordovician pest control
  The newly born shell-crushers swung their paddling feet through the swaying clusters of sea ringworms and swam toward the area parasitized by broad-horned snails. The second pair of nutcracker-like pincers move, ready to crush the shell of the broad-angle snail.

The first pair of pincers clamps the tail stalk of the Heilinella plant to stabilize the swaying body. The second pair of claws opened wide to catch the bottom of the wide-angle conch shell, and then closed it forcefully.

There was a cracking sound, and the shell of the wide-angle snail finally couldn't withstand it, and cracks appeared.

Lin Yi immediately increased his efforts, and the cracks gradually spread, finally triggering a qualitative change. With a click, the shell of the wide-angle snail completely shattered, exposing the defenseless soft tissue underneath.

The first pair of claws immediately opened to the left and right, and together with the small claws next to the mouth, they tore up the soft flesh below.

Without the protection of the shell, the soft tissue was no match for the pincers specialized in cutting flesh and blood. It was quickly torn into pieces and the flesh and blood were blurred.

Seeing that it was indeed effective, Lin Yi immediately controlled the mother nest to produce more shell-breaking snails, and cleaned the wide-angle snails attached to the surface of the sea ringworm. At the same time, he also observed and searched for what might be the shell snails this time. The source of the earliest pest and disease incidents in history.

The adult body of the broad-angle snail does not move throughout its life, so later studies have two speculations about the reproduction method of the broad-angle snail.

The first is that its larvae have a certain degree of swimming ability and can swim and find nearby hosts such as sea buds and ringworms, and parasitize them. Then the holes were drilled to allow the snail shell to grow abnormally close to the main body of the host.

The second type is inferred based on the cap snails with similar behavior in later generations. The adult snails will directly produce and hatch small snails under the shell cover. The small snails will climb outwards and spread, looking for a suitable location to drill holes. It takes root and begins to eat the host's orchid or cut off the host's captured food.

If it is the second situation, it will be much easier to prevent and treat. However, judging from the current situation of "snail damage" to the clusters of sea ringworms, the most likely scenario is the first scenario, that is, the broad-angle snails give birth to floating larvae, which swim to find new hosts, and can even follow the current in the water. Spread over wider bodies of water.

This means that even if the snails in this area are cleared, there will still be snail larvae from other waters coming with the waves, parasitizing on the clusters of kelp that extend from the mother nest, and starting a new round. diffusion. Therefore, prevention and treatment has become a somewhat difficult problem.

Lin Yi controlled the shell-crushing workers to continue cleaning the wide-angle snails that had been attached to the body of the sea ringworm, crushing the snail shells and cleaning the soft tissue, while thinking about a solution.

While trying to recall the methods of dealing with pests and diseases in his previous life, Lin Yi suddenly discovered that he had fallen into a misunderstanding.

The Sea Ringo Cluster is not a traditional crop, but an extension of the mother's nest. It is essentially a part of the mother's nest. Although it cannot be controlled due to the lack of a complex nervous system, it is essentially an extension of Lin Yi's consciousness and can be genetically edited. .

The solid shell of the snail is close to the calyx-shaped body of the snail, but when it intercepts the food filtered by the snail, it must extend its specialized long mouth and touch the wrist covered with whisker-like structures. to fish out plankton caught in the Ringo's whiskers.

In other words, as long as Hailingo's wrists can have some passive defense capabilities, this problem can be solved perfectly.

The passive defense method that is suitable for the Hailinguo template and is efficient enough is naturally toxins. As for the suitable source of gene fragments, Lin Yi also has an idea - jellyfish.

Jellyfish appeared very early, and can be traced back to the Ediacaran period, which is farther than the Cambrian period. Although the body structure is simple, it has a long life, and it has lived until the era of Lin Yi's previous life and remained prosperous. When mentioning them, toxicity is often the first thing that comes to mind. Previously, when Lin Yi planned to equip the horseshoe crab with venom glands, he also considered the stinging cells of jellyfish.

But this thing is really not compatible with the scorpion tail of the feather-winged horseshoe crab, but it is just right on the wrist of Hailingo.

Thinking about it, the two soldiers cruising nearby changed their direction and swam towards the sea area where they had the impression that there were jellyfish activities nearby.

Soon, a target appeared in Bing Hao's compound eyes. The one-meter-long scorpion-like body swam upwards with the swing of its tail. As soon as the sickle limbs were closed, it pierced the body of a huge jellyfish, caught it in the sickle limbs, and returned to the direction of the mother's nest.

Primitive structure also has primitive advantages. The jellyfish's jelly-like gelatinous body was pierced for a long time but it didn't die, and its tentacles were still waving in an attempt to sting the soldier's body.

But it would be unrealistic to puncture an exoskeleton derived from a horseshoe crab template using cnidocytes alone. Bing Hao completely ignored the strength of the attack and swam toward the nest with the jellyfish's body between his legs.

Soon a worker came forward, used his chelicerae to take over the jellyfish's gelatinous body, which was still twitching from time to time, and violently stuffed it into the holes on the surface of the mother's nest, allowing it to be absorbed.

Four hundred million years ago, there was no need to cope with the predation needs of various vertebrates in later generations. The toxicity of jellyfish at this time was quite limited. Even if it stung people, it would only hurt a little and nothing would happen.

But the stinging cell gene fragment is integrated into Ringo's wrist, which is enough to deal with mollusks the size of the broad-horned snail.
  The gene fragments were quickly integrated, and the new Helimela plant structure can now be extended and proliferated by the mother nest. As long as the old version of the Helimela plant is completely replaced, there is no longer need to worry about the parasitism of the broad-angle snail.

Although the poison glands will slightly increase the consumption of the Heliconia plant itself and indirectly reduce the output, it is still worth it compared to being cut off by the wide-angle snail and losing most of the output. Lin Yi immediately controlled the mother nest and began to replace the extended clusters.

However, the original clusters cannot be directly upgraded to a new template. Lin Yi simply controlled ordinary workers to directly pull out the original plants, waiting for them to be attached to the ground, like a root network, from the mother nest. A new cluster of ringworms grows again from the spreading caudal peduncle.

In order to recover nutrients, Lin Yi simply asked the shell-crushing workers to withdraw, and ordinary workers directly stuffed the plucked sea ringworm plants and the wide-angle snails attached above into the holes on the surface of the mother's nest, allowing the mother's nest to recover. The nest completely absorbs it, and by the way absorbs the genetic fragment of the broad-angle snail.

Like barnacles in later generations, it is directly and firmly attached to the surface of the Halincho body, so there must be some kind of suction cup-like structure.

Although he couldn't think of any good effects at the moment, the genetic fragments of this structure were worth letting Lin Yi absorb into the genetic sequence inventory of the mother's nest first.

In other territories, clusters of kelp that had not been harmed by snails were slowly replacing new poisonous kelp strains to prevent the larvae of broad-angle snails from drifting along the water. Soon, Lin Yi no longer needed to worry. Parasitism by broad-horned snails or other similar organisms that may exist.

(End of this chapter)