The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 23 Second Generation Soldier
  Further specializing the chelicerae into lethal pincers as weapons seems to be a good choice.

As long as the chelicerae used to tear flesh and blood tissue can be slightly improved, it can become an excellent offensive weapon. Later generations of pterygoid horseshoe crabs and scorpions all used pincers as a means of output.

But in a sense, specializing the chelicerae is also a compromise for taking into account both eating and output.

Both horseshoe crabs and scorpions belong to the chelicera subphylum, and their typical mouthparts can only be obtained by chelicerae. For example, insects, which have the most complex and efficient mouthpart structures among arthropods, do not need to evolve chelicerae.

Moreover, the structure of the chelicerae is destined to make them more suitable for dealing with many and small enemies, rather than attacking a single large enemy.

In fact, most non-social creatures have no need to compete with small things. In short, it is not feasible to copy the structure of chelicerae to deal with a behemoth such as Orthogonite.

In order to cause effective damage to the helical stone, a large enough output structure is still needed.

After thinking about it, Lin Yi still planned to use Binghao's sickle limb, which was originally derived from the feather-winged horseshoe crab. When a pair of sickle limbs are closed together, they act like a giant clamp, enough to cause considerable damage to the soft body of the helical stone.

But if you want to continue causing damage after being clamped, you need to improve the long spines on the inside of the sickle limb.

Lin Yi flattened and widened the cone-shaped slender spikes on the sickle limbs, suitable for fixing the prey's body, and then created a sharp cutting blade-like structure on the inner edge, making it like two rows of daggers that can be easily torn apart. flesh.

These modified structures, dagger-like spikes of different lengths, are similar to the differentiation of teeth of synapsid vertebrates. They are composed of several particularly thick blade spines and neatly arranged small spines. When the sickle limbs are retracted, the adjacent blades The thorns will cross in pairs, like scissors, to further enhance the lethality.

At the same time, the poisonous sacs that secrete digestive juices in Binghao have been further strengthened. Lin Yi has further simplified the normal digestive system of Binghao, freeing up space to accommodate larger poisonous sacs to inject more energy into the trapped opponent. More digestive juices.

The price is that the current soldiers' ability to digest biological flesh and blood is reduced, which may even affect their normal life.

But fortunately, the nutrient eggs produced by the mother's nest are very easy to digest and absorb, so the soldiers can completely leave the task of digesting food to the mother's nest, while they feed on the nutrient eggs produced by the mother's nest. The advantages of eusocial species are evident.

After some detailed changes, the second-generation soldier with comprehensively upgraded combat effectiveness was born.

And because the second-generation soldiers are mainly targeted structural optimization compared to the first-generation soldiers, the nutrients required to produce a second-generation soldier from the brood are only slightly higher than those required to produce a first-generation soldier, and large-scale raids can still be achieved. .

The mother's nest that pupates directly from the pioneer mother has a complete structure of marine ringworm clusters, and the nutrients stored in the fat tissue of several nesting workers allow the mother's nest to have a lot of nutrients for production at the beginning. Soldiers.

Not long after, several second-generation soldiers were born from the holes on the surface of the mother's nest with their sickle limbs covered with thorns.

An unlucky Sakaban soft-shelled turtle was chosen as the experimental subject. The second-generation soldier's exoskeleton had just hardened and was pinched by the blade-covered sickle limbs. The Sakaban soft-shelled turtle's rear half of its body, which was not protected by the carapace, was immediately torn apart by the bladed spines. Split into two pieces, the bright red vertebrate blood quickly spread among the blue waves. Although the structure is only slightly modified and the structural strength is strengthened, the damage caused to soft tissue has already been regarded as a qualitative leap.

The soldiers of the previous generation could at most stab the Sakaban turtle to the core, restrict its movement, and then execute it with its tail spines. It would never be possible to tear it apart so cleanly.

Even though it is a powerful helical stone, its soft tissue does not have strong defensive capabilities. Such power is definitely enough.

With the cooperation brought by the group consciousness, as long as there are ten second-generation soldiers, Lin Yi is sure to fight against the straight spiral horn stone.

However, there are more and more predatory species that have not been discovered in later generations. Although the predatory Anomalocaris escaped into the deep sea, and the number of Ortholiths was probably scarce, so it made sense that no fossils were found in later generations, but combined with the bizarre appearance of the mother nest and its own nest group, Lin Yi still felt that something was a little weird.

Whether it was the butterfly effect caused by his arrival unexpectedly, or whether this era was not as simple as he imagined, Lin Yi didn't know.

But he knew that the development status of the nest group must change quickly, and a large number of second-generation soldiers must be produced quickly to prepare for various enemies that may appear.

With the idea of ​​being prepared, Lin Yi controlled all the broods and started to attack as many troops as possible.

The mother nest at the rear directly produces female-level insects, allowing it to lay a large number of second-generation soldier eggs, allowing him to stably obtain a large number of soldier insects over a period of time to prepare for emergencies.

Gene templates between broods cannot be shared in real time. However, the genetic template of the second-generation soldier does not use any new gene fragments, but only integrates existing gene sequences. Therefore, in other broods behind, the same genetic template only needs to be combined again to produce The same second-generation soldier.

At the same time, more eggs of individuals that were improved from the pioneering mother's template were also produced by the mother's nest. But now, their mission is no longer to expand the nest colony, but to use the three pairs of feeding appendages on both sides of the head and the mesh structure connected between them to filter more plankton in the upper waters to prepare for Lin Yi's crazy attack. Provide nutrients.

In order to better achieve this goal, the genetic fragments of these pioneering mothers have been adjusted, making the body shape more slender, and the three pairs of feeding appendages on the head more developed, allowing them to form a network of fine whiskers connected between them. The structure can filter out more plankton in the water. This makes them ready to serve as a completely new template.

This template was called "Lying Yang Mu Hao" by Lin Yi. Compared with the pioneering mother, the egg-laying structure of the filter mother is also slightly degraded, and it can only produce nutritious eggs to provide the obtained food to the nest group.

They will serve as the "pelagic fishing boats" of the nest colony, fishing for plankton in areas that are out of reach of the mother nest and the ringworm clusters to obtain more nutrients.

After doing all this, his consciousness returned to the sea area where the snails were infested. Among the coral reefs, more than a dozen second-generation soldiers had finished eating the nutritious eggs produced by the mother's nest. A pair of newly modified sickle limbs were ready to go, shocking Those Sakaban turtles who had never seen such a scene hid in the gaps between the rocks and did not dare to poke their heads.

In his consciousness, Lin Yi fell into deep thought as he looked at the open water outside the coral reef through the pairs of dark-brown compound eyes of the second-generation soldiers, as well as the huge figure still cruising around the periphery.

(End of this chapter)