The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 281 Alien Ecology

After a while, a shadow fly stretched out from the fastest-growing mother nest, with two pairs of membrane wings spread out, facing Tianyuan Si, which had just rotated above its head and illuminated this area, and made its first sound. Neighing.

Improvements in materials have meant that newly born level individuals no longer need to wait for the exoskeleton to harden, but can be put into use immediately. A pair of well-developed compound eyes and a special infrared band sensing eye for living stars looked around, clearly observing everything on this living planet.

The level of evolution of organisms on this living planet is higher than that on Earth, and there should be warm-blooded animals anyway. Therefore, the infrared night vision monocular that had been abandoned at the beginning of the Shadowfly design was reinstalled on the top of the head.

In the field of vision, there are still a large number of small and medium-sized flying insects rising into the sky with the arrival of the shadowflies, quickly gathering in swarms and flying away, like locust swarms on the earth in future generations, shrouded in darkness like a black cloud.

Some small flying creatures similar to vertebrates followed behind the flying insects, flying down from time to time, picking up a flying insect in their mouths, then raising the height, and swallowing the whole flying insect into their mouths in two or three strokes.

The compound eyes of the shadow fly inherit the powerful dynamic vision of the compound eyes of arthropods, and can clearly see the whole picture of those flying creatures - they are indeed vertebrates, and they still have four limbs and the classic configuration of the jaws arranged up and down. It seems that the vertebrates on earth The configuration is indeed the optimal solution in a certain sense.

The configuration of these flying creatures seems to be different from any flying vertebrates on earth. Their forelimbs evolved into wing-like shapes, with membranes connected to muscle tissue, similar to the fleshy wings of pterosaurs. But the difference is that its wing membrane is not connected to the hind limbs, but extends all the way to the front of the tail.

They retain a long tail, and protruding spines extend from the end of the tail vertebra to both sides, forming a tail-like structure. Combined with the head that is somewhat similar to some lizards on the earth, this thing does not look like any real flying creature that has ever existed on the earth, but rather like a miniature version of a bipedal flying dragon.

The gravity of this planet is abnormally lower than that of the earth, and the conditions for the birth of flying creatures are not so harsh. These small "bipedal flying dragons" have not completely degraded their teeth, tails, etc. like the larger flying creatures on the earth.

They are similar to geckos, with a short head and well-developed eyes. There are also fine teeth in the jaws, which seem to be specially used to catch large flying insects like locusts. Based on the numbers displayed by the latter, they must also be more prosperous.

The shadowfly slowly split open the tall vegetation in front of it, clearing a clearing, then fluttered its wings and soared into the sky, creating a path among the migratory locusts. The huge body caused the "small bipedal dragons" on the side to avoid it.

I grabbed one and absorbed it to extract the gene sequence. The general body structure expressed by the gene sequence immediately appeared in my consciousness - the arrangement of the internal organs was slightly different from that of earth creatures, but the spine structure and bone shape were similar, or in other words, Another degree of different approaches leading to the same goal.

Continuing to fly forward, more strange creatures appeared in the field of vision of the shadow fly, but the strange thing is that from a structural point of view, there are almost no creatures that directly feed on plants. To be precise, except for those migratory locusts and similar ones. Some strange insects do not exist at all.

It seems that on this living planet, most small and medium-sized creatures feed directly on locusts, while larger creatures feed on small insectivores, rising step by step. It is not like a terrestrial ecosystem, but more like an ocean. . It wasn't until it flew out of the forest that larger animals finally appeared in Shadowfly's field of vision. They have forelimbs that are much longer than their hind limbs and a longer neck, and seem to feed on the young leaves of the tree canopy - this is the first large herbivore that Lin Yi discovered on this living planet.
But the surrounding situation shows that these large herbivores seem to be on this life star, at least in this area. Although some other medium and large animals occasionally eat plants, they basically eat occasionally. Omnivores with a fruit-like structure cannot eat branches and leaves.

This phenomenon is probably caused by the special fibrous tissue structure inside the stems and leaves of plants on this planet. In the arms race of animal and plant evolution, the existence of large vertebrates is a little slow, and they have not yet had time to evolve corresponding ones that can decompose These special fibrous tissues of the digestive system.

This has also resulted in the planet's mainstream herbivores becoming small arthropods that evolve quickly enough to keep up with the pace of plant evolution, just like the migratory locusts before.

On this planet, scenes like locust plagues on the earth are a normal phenomenon in the ecological circle. It is these large numbers of migratory locust swarms that are placed on the earth to move natural disasters properly. They support the bottom of the food chain and produce things that are completely different from the earth. Different ecosystems.

For the entire ecosystem, this is naturally the optimal solution for stabilization. However, if civilization is born on this planet and develops into the agricultural era, Lin Yi can't bear to imagine what kind of horrific natural disasters they will face.
However, civilization obviously cannot be born casually. On this planet, Lin Yi has not found any animals with intelligence levels reaching the level of orangutans. Not to mention this, he has not even seen true social insects.

Yes, Lin Yi paid special attention to whether there are true social animals, but so far, it seems that there are not. There are not even those that reach the level of the small arthropods on the Ezki home planet that the Ezki people call Kiril's ciliodontids.

The several living planets that the Ezki people have landed on before are basically still in the early stages of ecosystem formation, and the degree of perfection of the terrestrial ecosystem is not even better than when Lin Yi pecking at each other with terrestrial arthropod nests.

It is normal that no eusocial animals were born on this planet. On Earth, the birth of eusocial insects was at least in the Mesozoic Era. But there are no true social animals on this planet with a very complex ecosystem, which makes Lin Yi a little confused.

Combining some circumstances, he couldn't help but think about whether truly social animals existed against the selfish nature of genes.

Unfortunately, the current samples are still too few. They may be just examples and cannot explain anything. As for the remaining terrestrial planets, pioneering planets in other directions have not yet discovered them, and there is no way to obtain more samples.

Lin Yi secretly wrote down this idea and continued to control the shadowfly to fly forward to observe more creatures on the planet, such as the large flying creatures that had been glimpsed during the descent of the airdrop capsule, and at the same time confirm whether this place was suitable. Resolved some remaining nest issues.

(End of this chapter)