The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 34 Night Vision Compound Eye
  If the anomalocaridids nests were really driven into the depths of the ocean by the snail nests, then all this would be easy to explain.

The Anomalocaris nest group lost the competition with the Orthostridium nest group and was driven into the deep sea. It was forced to evolve a pressure-resistant exoskeleton and compound eyes that can see things clearly in low-light environments.

At the same time, the hive mind of the anomalocaridids nest group memorized the shape of the floating mother nest of the right spiral stone nest group, observed the structure suspected of floating mother nest at night, and prepared to launch a sneak attack at night.

Orthosperms are typical diurnal animals. At least under the observation of spy workers, these tentacled giants float and rest near the water at night.

Perhaps their primitive eyes have poor night vision, and their huge shells are prone to running aground on rocks or hitting similar species during nighttime activities. The Anomalocaris nest group that had fought against the Straight Spiral Stone Nest Group wanted to take advantage of this and catch the "Straight Spiral Stone" off guard.

With the maneuverability and speed of the swordfish-shaped Hed shrimp, under the guidance of the three-eyed Hed shrimp, it is enough to avoid the charge of the adult Hedron, then go around to the side of the Hed's body, and pierce the Hed with its sword edge. Fragile software parts.

Small-scale battles, especially raids at night, should be enough to deal with several adult Helicopterus, giving these Anomalocaris nests the confidence to attack.

As for why the anomalocaridids nest group with the powerful combat power of the swordfish-shaped Hed shrimp was defeated by the Hed's shrimp nest group, Lin Yi analyzed the two individuals: the adult Hed shrimp and the Swordfish-shaped Hed shrimp. The data collected during the battle compared the strengths and weaknesses of both sides and came to the conclusion that the smaller the scale of the battle, the more advantageous the Anomalocaris nest group was.

Judging from the size alone, charging head-on, the Swordfish-shaped Herd shrimp is by no means a match for the adult Strachocornus.

The shell of the Orthospermum makes them almost immune to attacks from the front. If you want to cause damage to them, you can only bypass the shell and attack the soft tissue.

If there is only one heliconia, the flexible swordfish-shaped Hed shrimp can easily bypass the shell of the helical stone and attack the soft tissue.

But once the number of helicoides increases, they can cover each other and prevent the swordfish-shaped shrimp from attacking behind, even if the number of swordfish-shaped shrimps also increases.

And if a large number of straight spiral stones are arranged in a formation like the last time they fought against the soldiers, and they charge in clusters, further covering each other's weaknesses and compressing the dodge space of the swordfish-shaped Hed shrimp, the anomalocaridids nest group will be in danger.

Therefore, the greater the number of both sides, the smaller the advantage of the swordfish-shaped Hurd shrimp.

What's more, in actual combat, there are still larvae of Ortholoplastis to restrain them, but it is difficult for ordinary Anomalocaris to effectively restrain the adults of Ortholoplastis, which further widens the gap between the two sides.

……

Controlling the workers, Lin Yi stuffed the flesh and blood of ordinary anomalocaridids and three-eyed Hed's shrimp into the holes on the surface of the mother's nest. Lin Yi skillfully began to absorb their genetic sequences and digest the spoils.

The first is the gene sequence related to the pressure-resistant exoskeleton of Anomalocaris. These Anomalocaris can adapt to the water pressure of both shallow and deep seas, indicating that they do not rely on balancing internal pressure to resist high pressure, but simply and crudely use the exoskeleton structure to resist.

However, their exoskeleton structure is not much stronger than the exoskeleton of Binghao, which was born out of the feather-winged horseshoe crab, when faced with cutting with sickle limbs. It is even slightly inferior, allowing Binghao to easily cut them into two with its sickle limbs. Half.

It should have some kind of special structure that can continuously resist water pressure, but the effect of resisting sharp cutting is not very good.     The next step is the genetic sequence of the three-eyed Hed shrimp. The large, stemless middle eye of the three-eyed Hurd shrimp brought some unexpected surprises to Lin Yi.

The blood-red compound eyes of these anomalies have strong night vision capabilities, and the middle eye of the three-eyed Hedrid shrimp is extremely adaptable to low-light environments.

And because Anomalocaris also belongs to pan-arthropods, and its compound eyes are homologous to true arthropods, its photosensitive structure that is extremely sensitive to weak light can be easily integrated into the genetic sequence of the soldier, allowing the soldier to have the same night vision ability.

But everything has a price. Due to changes in the structure of the optic nerve, the price for the compound eye structure of Anomalocaris to obtain strong night vision capabilities is that the refresh rate of their compound eyes is slightly reduced, which means that the "number of frames" is not as good as that of the compound eyes of the soldier crab, which was born out of the feather-winged horseshoe crab.

But fortunately, the refresh rate of arthropod compound eyes is already higher than that of human eyes, and it is within an acceptable range.

The new template will feature the blood-red compound eyes from the three-eyed Hurd shrimp, which Lin Yi simply calls the Night Vision Soldier.

He immediately took control of the brood and started the production of a night vision soldier. According to the existing information, the night vision ability of the Oriental Stone was poor. If the night vision soldiers were mixed in with the ordinary soldiers to provide vision, he would be able to better Easily launch a night raid on the Strawhorn.

In addition to the specialized night vision soldiers, Lin Yi also plans to slightly upgrade the template of ordinary soldiers. In the visual system of arthropods, in addition to a pair of compound eyes, there is also a single eye for photosensitivity. The feather-winged horseshoe crab has a bald head on its head. He has two such photosensitive eyes.

By simply replacing the optic nervous system of one eye with that of Anomalocaris, one can have certain night vision capabilities without affecting the refresh rate of the main compound eye.

The genetic sequences of the three-eyed Hed shrimp and the ordinary Anomalocaris have been digested. Unfortunately, there are too few tissue fragments of the swordfish-shaped Hed shrimp. At this time, they have been washed away by the current and cannot be extracted from the mother nest.

The gene sequence of the four-meter-long panarthropod must have gene segments that are useful to him, which can allow him to further strengthen his soldiers or edit a larger female frog template.

After reviewing the battle with the straight spiral horn stone and the swordfish-shaped Herd shrimp, Lin Yi came to the conclusion that an attack formation composed purely of second-generation soldiers still had its flaws, that is, the lack of a large enough body type. , a grade that is enough to compete with an adult snail, and under the cover of soldiers, it can directly cause fatal attacks to large individuals such as an adult snail and a swordfish-shaped Hed shrimp.

However, it is obviously unrealistic to directly enlarge the size of soldiers. With Lin Yi's current gene editing capabilities, the limit is to develop individuals at the level of mother and foreign mothers. And individuals of this size cannot cause qualitative changes. On the contrary, It will make the production of the mother nest troublesome and the gain outweighs the loss.

Previously, Lin Yi could only put the plan for a new grade on hold temporarily, but now, the appearance of the swordfish-shaped Hurd shrimp gave him an idea.

The swordfish-shaped Hurd shrimp, including the blade, is four meters long, which is a ready-made reference template. Therefore, Lin Yi's next plan is to obtain the genetic sequence of the swordfish-shaped Heard shrimp.

To this end, he plans to modify the exoskeleton of the soldier, transform it into a template that can withstand the pressure of deep water, and head towards the abyss.

However, just when Lin Yi was editing Bing Hao's template, he suddenly had some bold ideas. Thinking about it, he temporarily gave up on the genetic sequence of the soldier and started editing the genetic sequence of the worker.

(End of this chapter)