The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 315: Flying Insect Swarm
The ancient web-winged insect slowly flapped its membranous wings and fell, stretching out its six limbs, trying to attach itself to the body of the largest creature, and using the specialized needle-like structure of its tail to collect samples and analyze genetic sequences.

But at this moment, the creature seemed to have realized something, turned around, and swung its tail with the force of the turn, accurately knocking the ancient web-winged flying insect, which still maintained a body of about 20 centimeters in order to accommodate more special structures, away.

As mass-produced cannon fodder on the planet, the data of these small ancient web-winged flying insects are not much different from those of ordinary creatures. Under this powerful blow, their bones and tendons were still broken - although they actually did not have an endoskeleton.
The opponent's vigilance was a bit too much. The small flying grades of the Anomalocaris nest were probably killed in the same way. However, as a large predator, it was a bit unreasonable for it to show extraordinary aggression towards these smaller flying creatures.

The underground world is different from the surface environment. Since the basis of the ecosystem is radiosynthetic organisms like fungi rather than plants, and the environment is relatively more stable, there is no gap in the evolution of animals and plants that makes it difficult for ordinary herbivores to digest plants.

Swarms of flying insects like the Dixella locust have no advantages in the underground world. On the contrary, they completely disappear because they find it difficult to adapt to the high radiation environment. Those larger species that feed on flying insects like the Dixella locust and have a similar filter-feeding ecological niche are also unable to survive underground.

These creatures are obviously not such beings. Logically, they would not have the slightest interest in the existence of the ancient web-winged flying insect. But the fact is that several more ancient web-winged flying insects tried to approach, but they were shot down or driven away one by one.

Lin Yi was a little bit skeptical. A large number of ancient web-winged flying insects swarmed in from all directions, and almost all the ancient web-winged flying insects in the nearby area gathered in this area. He wanted to see what grudges the other party had with the ancient web-winged flying insects.

In the rear, at the first mother nest established in this area, more grade individuals were produced, and a series of operations were quickly started - no matter what the purpose was, Lin Yi planned to station a group of mother nests here for a long time.

Some improved versions of terrestrial scorpions have been produced and are using their well-developed and highly specialized chelicerae to dig into the rock wall nearby, splitting out pieces of special minerals.

The underground world of Dikla has rich reserves of radioactive minerals, which support a special ecosystem based on radiosynthetic fungi. Although the fungal carpet structure of the nest also has a similar and more efficient radiosynthetic system, the efficiency of various autotrophic biosynthesis alone cannot meet Lin Yi's long-term needs.

Lin Yi needs to use these radioactive ores more efficiently. The size of the mother nest continues to grow, and some of its internal chambers have begun to evolve rapidly into other structures, and a series of complex structures are gradually growing and taking shape.

It was not a new structure, but an old design from the previous generation - a bio-nuclear fission reactor structure - and in the underground world of Dikla, which had rich reserves of radioactive minerals, it was much simpler to produce a fission reactor using local materials.

However, because of the reuse of this previously outdated technology in the process of developing the right-helical-type light-second missile, Lin Yi once again accumulated some experience in structural improvement, and this generation of fission reactors also had some structural improvements.

The most obvious improvement is that the moderator is no longer stored in a dedicated space like a mechanical structure, but adopts a feature more suitable for biological structures - a large number of cell tissues filled everywhere directly change the composition of the cell fluid, allowing heavy water as a moderator to directly replace ordinary water as the main component of the cell fluid. Coupled with a series of miscellaneous structural optimizations, the new generation of fission reactors has a more compact structure, a smaller size, and a lower production cost. It is still a good choice for use in this environment.

As the radioactive fuel mined by land workers and extracted by fungal mat tissue became available, the entire bioreactor began to operate skillfully. A large amount of heat was evenly distributed to the thermal energy synthesis cell clusters along the special circulation system loaded with cooling fluids and converted into chemical energy.

The fungal blanket also absorbs inorganic components in the soil to form a large amount of organic matter for the pupation of grade individuals. All these structures have already started to operate during the pupation process of the mother nest. When they are completed, the ancient net-winged flying insects in front are almost assembled.

Swarms of ancient web-winged insects gathered in teams, and the dense flapping sounds echoed between the holes in the underground world. Their own light-emitting organs have basically been shut down, and they can only see things by relying on special low-light night vision compound eyes and infrared night vision monocular eyes with the help of dim fluorescent spots emitted by the fungal structure.

The diversity of the swarm version of the ancient web-winged insects has far exceeded that of the ancient web-winged insects from which they were originally genetically based. However, the mimicry of the ancient web-winged insects that were originally used to monitor the Ezki people and were a one-to-one replica of wild ancient web-winged insects are no longer in use.

Not to mention that the remnants of the Ezki exploration fleet have become friends, Lin Yi also has more efficient means of surveillance. Just talking about environmental factors, the Permian extinction has already occurred, and the entire Paleodiverptera has been reduced to 95% of what it was under the natural disaster, so there is no point in camouflage anymore.

To be precise, there is basically no meaning to subdivide the nest version of the ancient web-winged flying insects now. An astonishingly cheap rough template and a highly modular organ design make this small grade now similar to the various small drones of later generations, which can do everything from reconnaissance and patrol to murder and arson.

The general appearance of this batch of ancient web-winged flying insects adopts Lin Yi's "optimal design" for the environment of Dikla Star, which is quite different from the source of genetic templates on Earth. In addition, they are also equipped with radiation synthetic cell layers, night vision compound eyes and other structures for the underground world environment.

As for the rest of the organ tissues, most of the previous individuals were equipped with stinging needle-like structures that could be used for both tissue sample collection and fungal spore injection. However, due to the other party's unexpected vigilance, this batch of ancient web-winged flying insects were installed with different organ structures.

As the other party was alert, the flying insects could not get close. The remaining ancient web-winged flying insects monitored the target from a distance to make sure it would not leave the area and waited for the arrival of subsequent flying insect swarms.

The first batch of flying insects arrived at the scene quickly, and gathered into a formation, flapping their membrane wings and slowly flying towards the current location of the target. In a sense, these guys did arouse Lin Yi's interest, but for them, this was not good news.
(End of this chapter)