The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 22 Mother and Improved Soldiers

Previously, because he rarely encountered opponents, Lin Yi did not make many improvements to the genetic sequence of the soldier. He added poison glands and tail clips based on the feather-winged horseshoe crab template, and never made major changes again.

Moreover, after the birth of the pioneer mother, Lin Yi gained the ability to launch large-scale troops.

But also because there is no demand, during this period, it still reproduces by directly producing individuals from the mother nest, and the extra workers are used to take care of the sea ringworm clusters. The number of soldiers has always stayed at a sufficient level. level.

Although the mother nest can directly produce individual eggs, the number is limited after all, and it needs to produce nutritious eggs to pupate directly to produce adult individuals, so the remaining production is somewhat insufficient.

What Lin Yi needs is a grade that is large enough and can lay eggs efficiently.

With a thought, the existing gene sequence is edited through the mother nest.

The genetic template of the pioneering mother-fly was selected and the three pairs of feeding appendages on its head were changed to a pair of sickle limbs similar to the feather-winged horseshoe crab template. However, the clustered spikes were made more fine and dense, no longer suitable for fighting. It is suitable for digging through sand and sifting out large particles in the sand. At the same time, there is a pair of chelicerae between the improved sickle limbs, or rake limbs, to assist in eating.

The posterior body, that is, the abdominal part, was drastically modified, directly using the template from the nesting craftsman, making it disproportionately enlarged, similar to the shape of a crab body and horseshoe crab. But the difference is that the inside is not fat, but enlarged ovaries derived from the genetic sequence of the Poseidon Helmet Shrimp, giving it amazing reproductive capabilities.

At the same time, the tail spines are close to degenerating, rendering them incapable of any attack, and all other appendages have been changed to ordinary legs to reduce costs as much as possible.

This level is simply called the mother worm by Lin Yi, and it is the three main grades of the nest together with the work worm and the soldier worm. The pioneer mother is divided under it and exists as a sub-level.

At the same time, Lin Yi also began to edit the genetic sequence of Binghao to fight against the Orthogonal Stone.

First of all, he made slight changes to the body structure of the soldiers that had not been significantly changed since it was modified from the feather-winged horseshoe crab template. Just like the modification work, which is the short-winged horseshoe crab template, he replaced one segment of the book gills with The appendages later changed the shape of the appendages and replaced them with flat, paddle-like paddling legs, giving the new template two pairs of four paddling legs in total.

Previously, among the opponents faced by Lin Yi's nest, only the Poseidon Helmeted Shrimp was active in open waters, but as filter feeders, their speed and agility could only be considered decent.

The right spiral stone has unprecedented mobility in open waters, so Lin Yi must strengthen Binghao's swimming ability.

If it didn't occupy the space for muscle attachment and affect combat effectiveness, he even planned to install a water-jet propulsion system on the soldier.

But it's a pity that there is no guarantee for this kind of thing, so we can only settle for the next best thing, give full play to the traditional skills of arthropods, and specialize a pair of appendages to deal with troubles.

After solving the mobility problem, the most critical thing left is the ability to cause effective damage.

The pair of sickle limbs of the feather-winged horseshoe crab are not actually made for fighting. The correct way to use them is to use those long spines like a sieve to sift out trilobites and other benthic organisms from the sand, trap the prey, and then use other The appendages and tail spines are pierced and pulled, causing injury. The soldiers modified from the feather-winged horseshoe crab template have strengthened the structural strength of these spines, improving their output capabilities. But the main function is still to control rather than directly cause damage. Bullying Sakaban soft-shell turtles and small trilobites is okay. But when it comes to large prey such as Poseidon shrimps, it still needs to be improved to be connected to the poison sac so that it can be injected and digested. Liquid's tail stab shot out.

When dealing with cornerstones, the digestive juice is not as effective as the Poseidon Helmet Shrimp. It can still fight against the bulky cornerstones. But to face the straight hornstones, Lin Yi needs to create a handy guy for Binghao to fight with. Hornstone's horny beak contends.

For normal creatures, any fancy structure is no better than a pair of mouthparts or jaws with sufficient bite force.

The best example of jawed fish is Jiping Tianxia, ​​which is at its peak when it debuts. But this idea was dismissed by Lin Yi for the first time. The reason is that the mouthparts of the Chelicera subphylum are really hard to get your hands on...

Moreover, using the jaw or mouthparts as the main means of output is actually a compromise.

The competition between living things is not just about fighting power, but eating efficiency is also crucial.

Especially for those species that scavenge and eat garbage at the bottom - eating one more mouthful of garbage than others in the same period of time can sometimes be the difference between life and death.

And because of the existence of various extinction events caused by environmental changes, the species that scavenge and eat at the bottom of the food chain are the key to the prosperity of a group.

Without the diversity of ecological niches at the bottom of the food chain, a group with only top predators in the upper ecological niches is like a tree without roots and cannot last long.

Just like in the competition between plate-footed horseshoe crabs and jawed fishes in later generations, small plate-footed horseshoe crabs are not as efficient in eating as those jawed fishes in tearing food with their chelicerae. As a result, all the garbage-picking niches at the bottom of the food chain are lost to people. .

And when those large winged horseshoe crabs that were desperate to grow in size became extinct during the sea recession at the end of the Silurian Period, the small jawed fish that scavenged for garbage quickly became larger and evolved into unprecedentedly large predators, while the plate-footed horseshoe crabs There was no successor, and it never recovered from the fall.

However, in the process of biological evolution, the number of benign mutant traits that can be accumulated over a certain period of time is limited. Therefore, only species with mutated traits that best meet their survival and reproduction needs can succeed in competition.

In layman's terms, it means that there are limited skill points that can be allocated within a fixed level. In this case, only the player who clicks on the skill tree with the most attribute bonuses can win the game.

Investing "skill points" in the "skill tree" of jaws or mouthparts can simultaneously meet the two key needs of powerful attacks and efficient eating, so it has become the choice of most creatures. After all, it is equivalent to clicking on a skill tree to give two skills, and they are both very powerful skills. You can't lose money if you click on them.

But none of this is a problem for the current nest. For example, in later generations of highly specialized eusocial insects, such as ants and termites, the highly specialized soldier ants in some species have lost the ability to eat independently and can only rely on feeding from worker ants. But this allows them to let go of their evolved mouthpart structure and become truly born for combat.

The same is true for the current nest group. There are workers to process the food, and the soldiers who are responsible for fighting can naturally let their own evolution go, without having to be timid in order to take into account the efficiency of eating. If we stick to the traditional route of mouthpart specialization, this opportunity will be wasted.

(End of this chapter)