The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 314 Eusocial Animals

A well-developed water system runs across the lake, converging here into a large lake. On both sides of the lake are dense forests composed of towering fungi and trees, dotted with faint blue fluorescence emitted by strange fungus-like life forms, giving the entire environment a strange beauty.

Several Dixon giant crabs tread on the shallow water with their long and thick limbs. A pair of slender claws that evolved convergently with the winged horseshoe crabs on Earth occasionally pick up two fat native fish of the underground world. On the shore nearby, there are also a few small tooth dragons lurking in the dark.

But these were not the focus of Lin Yi, who was observing the whole scene through the vision of the ancient web-winged flying insect. After receiving the information about the Anomalocaris nest, he immediately controlled the nearest ancient web-winged flying insect to come, naturally not for these gene sequences that he had already tasted.

Looking around, the ancient web-winged flying insect randomly selected a large animal nearby, flapped its membranous wings, slowly approached the other animal, stretched out its six limbs, landed on its broad back, then bent its abdomen, and a curved, slender, needle-like structure slowly stretched out.

The upgraded exoskeleton with special ingredients easily penetrates into the flesh. At the same time, the end secretes an anesthetic for the creatures on Dikla Star, making the opponent unaware of it. A series of operations then begin.

A large number of fungal spores and special microscopic materials extend from the end of the stinging needle, penetrating deep into the flesh and blood. The spores quickly spread throughout the body along the circulatory system, begin to multiply, and gradually spread throughout the body, while beginning to release various chemical substances.

After a while, a large number of fungal spores that had spread throughout the body attacked at the same time. The creature chosen as the target instantly became limp and fell to the ground. The purple-black fungal tissue quickly extended out and wrapped around its original body.

After a while, a land nest structure was formed. At the top of the nest, countless smaller pupae sacs densely stretched out of the body, and then burst, revealing the grade individuals below - that is, a large number of ancient web-winged flying insects.

A large group of flying insects quickly scattered and began to search the area with their developed compound eyes. The mother nest also continued to multiply, with more individuals being produced rapidly. Together with the fungal mat, an underground base was quickly established nearby.

After all, the environment of the underground world is not suitable for using gastrocysts for transportation. Dikla, which is half a protected area, cannot achieve global coverage of fungal mats like those barren planets that are specifically used to obtain materials and form a global material transportation system. It is better to develop locally.

After patrolling the area, a small flying Anomalocaris individual from the Anomalocaris nest that was monitoring and tracking the target was accidentally preyed upon, and the target was temporarily lost. Only then could they send out a large number of individuals again to search for it.

If it were Lin Yi, he would definitely ask the tracking individual to find a way to parasitize another special small individual on the target to achieve continuous positioning. However, the Anomalocaris nest group may have often had strange ideas in the concepts of underwater combat and current space combat, but they are not so familiar with the inland environment of the planet.

After all, this involves the blind spot of knowledge of the Anomalocaris nest. The other party neither has the accumulation from another civilization like Lin Yi, nor has it experienced evolutionary competition on land. And because it is no longer important and has too little in common with space warfare, Lin Yi simply did not teach anything in detail.

In a sense, the preconceived notion of intraplanetary combat may actually limit the imagination of space tactics, just as some later ideas took it for granted that space warfare would be a simple "cyber queue shooting".

Therefore, Lin Yi did not instill too much combat concepts about the inland environment of the planet into the Anomalocaris nest group. Anyway, they did not need to land on other people's planets and fight desperately with the defense forces. After searching with a large number of ancient web-winged flying insects, Lin Yi quickly found the existence of the target - it was a creature with a strange appearance, but generally speaking, it stood on two feet, with a T-shaped body, similar to the shape of a large theropod dinosaur.

In the vision of the ancient web-winged flying insect, the huge figure that was more than ten meters long was the most conspicuous. It had a sturdy body, a ferocious and huge head, and clusters of bone spurs and keratin protrusions made it look particularly terrifying.

According to the previously determined biological classification unit of Dikla Star, this creature should belong to the order Theridiosauria, a large predator. But this alone was not enough to attract Lin Yi's attention. What really concerned him was another feature of this creature.

Ahead, several similar creatures of smaller size, which share many features with the large one but have completely different body proportions, are searching in all directions, seemingly looking for traces of large prey.

Although it does have many common features with the larger one at the back that prove they are of the same species, there is one obvious difference - their forelimbs are incredibly long in proportion to the one at the back, and they even walk on all fours.

This made Lin Yi think of the class differentiation in eusocial animals - although the decisive reproductive class has not yet been determined, after all, it seems that both sides seem to have clear allometric growth differentiation, unlike the differences between the sexes or the differences between adults and cubs.

Although it is not unprecedented that juveniles, subadults and adults in a single organism have different structural proportions and occupy different ecological niches, that was to stagger the ecological niches and reduce intraspecific competition, rather than implicitly cooperating with each other and hunting collaboratively as they do now.

Lin Yi felt that he might have finally encountered a true social animal native to the planet Dikla, and a true social animal of such a size at that - to be honest, he was somewhat curious about the natural existence of true social animals.

On Earth in later times, there are quite a diverse and highly specialized species of eusocial animals, but on the home planet of Ezgi, which is at a similar level of evolution, similar forms of existence have been confined to the initial stages for a long time, and no similar creatures have been found on the surface of Dikla.

Lin Yi, who had dabbled in eusocial insects in his previous life and had become the ultimate form of eusocial evolution in this life, was naturally curious about this question. Now, the appearance of these suspected large eusocial animals was an excellent research opportunity, which might allow him to gain a deeper understanding of the evolution of eusocial animals.

Even if the research is in-depth enough, it may provide more inspiration to him as a nesting form. In short, no matter what, Lin Yi will not miss the opportunity to study this creature.

The first step, of course, is to find a way to obtain some samples, directly study its genetic sequence, analyze it from the simplest, crudest and most direct perspective, and come to a conclusion at the physiological level - is this a truly social animal?

(End of this chapter)