The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 9 The idea of ​​brood evolution

The corpse of a Poseidon Helmet Shrimp made Lin Yi subconsciously add three poisonous individuals of feather-winged horseshoe crabs and ten individuals of short-winged horseshoe crabs.

The current combat strength was sufficient, but Lin Yi was still not satisfied with the eating speed, so he continued to focus on producing individual short-winged horseshoe crabs to digest the nutrients provided by the prey carcasses faster and convert them into his own strength.

For some reason, the waters of this generation do not seem to be too fertile, but there are not many Poseidon Helmet Shrimps. Before the bones of the previous one were cold, the trace of the second one appeared in the field of vision.

Its body is slightly larger than the previous one. The four rows of fin-like structures on its sides are swinging, pushing the huge body to cruise near the sea surface. A pair of claw-like structures covered with long baleen like whales are waving leisurely. It was filtering the plankton in the sea, completely unaware that a similar body had died here not long ago, and the murderer was on the sea bed below, eyeing it again.

Lin Yi controlled the individual feather-winged horseshoe crab to swing its fan-shaped flat tail, and quietly approached the unsuspecting Benmera Poseidon Helmet Shrimp.

This time, tactics have changed with the emergence of new arms. Five nerve-enhanced horseshoe crabs slowly approached from all sides, while three poisonous horseshoe crabs quietly floated upward, preparing to launch a surprise attack.

The pair of compound eyes on the eye stalks of the Poseidon Helmet Shrimp looked at the approaching feather-winged horseshoe crabs all around as the eye stalks rotated. But this time, Lin Yi, who had experience, did not give it too long to react.

The nerve-enhanced feather-winged horseshoe crabs swarmed up and pulled the huge body of the Poseidon Helmet Shrimp. Then, three poisonous feather-winged horseshoe crabs launched a sudden attack from above.

The long spines on the sickle limbs penetrated the relatively soft exoskeleton of the body of the Poseidon Helmet Shrimp. Immediately, the scorpion tail was raised above the head, and two pincer-like structures like earwig tail clamps opened, revealing the sharp stingers between the structures. .

The tail spine pierces the exoskeleton, and the newly installed poison sac through the mother's nest gene editing ability is squeezed hard, and a large amount of digestive juice is injected into the body of the Poseidon Helmet Shrimp.

Corrosive digestive juices spread rapidly along the open-tube circulation system, wreaking havoc on every cell along the way. The Poseidon Helmet Shrimp struggled painfully, waving its fins randomly, causing a surge of water.

Although due to the relative size, the injected digestive juice cannot quickly turn the soft tissue of the prey into a pool of pus like the spiders or hunting bugs of later generations. However, the damage caused to the Poseidon Helmet Shrimp is still much higher than the previous pure physical output.

After a while, the huge body slowly stopped struggling and fell towards the bottom of the sea. Once again, he drove away the Sakaban soft-shelled turtle that quickly came forward to suck up the food residue. Lin Yi controlled the individual short-winged horseshoe crab to quickly move forward, and used his chelicerae to tear up the Poseidon, which had become semi-soft after being injected with a large amount of digestive fluid. Helmet shrimp flesh and blood.

……

Another huge Poseidon shrimp was eaten clean, leaving only the hard parts such as the head shell and claw-like structure. The size of the individual under Lin Yi's consciousness increased again.

But this time, looking at the sieve-like filter feeding structure on the stump of the Poseidon Helmet Shrimp, an idea suddenly flashed through Lin Yi's mind.

Since the Cambrian period, when complex multicellular life began, filter feeding has evolved in species such as the sickle-shaped Cambrian rake shrimp and the northern sieve shrimp.

In the long history of evolution, from the Poseidon shrimp to the tyrannosaurus, the Leeds kelp, to the Acrosaurus and the blue whale, and even the filter-feeding giant crocodile Acanthus appeared in fresh water - generations of generations have converged to produce similar Creatures of Habit have proven their potential. This behavior of obtaining food directly from the lowest trophic level effectively avoids the loss of nutrients in the process from low to high trophic levels. In a simple and popular way, there is no middleman to make a profit, allowing each generation of specialized filter-feeding organisms to They all have the potential to grow into giant beasts of unprecedented size.

There are many ways to filter feed. For example, the Poseidon Helmet Shrimp swims actively, allowing the net-like filter-feeding structure to catch plankton along the way.

Most of the filter feeders in later generations were whales, swallowing the plankton together with the seawater, and then expelling the seawater, leaving only a large amount of plankton.

The above two methods can be collectively referred to as active filter feeding. Then naturally there is another way: passive filter feeding. This is also the most primitive way, which is to be fixed on the seabed and let the ocean currents wash the plankton into your mouth. Its origins may date back to the earlier Ediacaran period.

Compared with the first two, the last one is mostly primitive animal groups, and is often even mistaken for plants.

This method is very inefficient, but because it has little activity, slow metabolism, and consumes very few nutrients, it can still accumulate considerable nutrients over a long period of time.

But this immovable primitive animal form reminded Lin Yi of the mother's nest.

Although many of the functions of the Mother's Nest are not primitive, they seemed very advanced even for the era in which Lin Yi lived. But one thing is similar to those primitive creatures, that is, it can only be fixed on the seabed and cannot move.

This led to Lin Yi's idea - if the mother nest is equipped with a structure that passively filters food from seawater, so that it can be self-sufficient to a certain extent, the mother nest can produce more individuals and reduce hunting. individual stress.

In fact, if possible, he would like to directly embed the plant's genetic sequence into the mother nest. However, the genetic sequence of absorbing plants seems to be a bit ahead of the current mother nest. He tried many algae, but without success, so he had to find another way and use passive filter feeding animals to make do.

Thinking about this, Lin Yi immediately selected the target to absorb the gene sequence - some early echinoderms, which are the close relatives of later generations of starfish, sea urchins and sea cucumbers.

The evolution of these echinoderms can be described as a flurry of demons. Later generations also nicknamed them epidermis. However, in this era, those epidermis species with poor skin have not yet evolved. The representative species are still Hai Lei and Hai Ringo. type. They are similar to later-generation crinoids, which are exactly Lin Yi's targets - passive filter feeders anchored to the seabed.

After controlling the individual to swim around twice, Lin Yi discovered the target, which was Hai Ringo.

Their appearance is very simple, a calyx-shaped body that is ten or even nine times similar to Ringo is fixed on the seabed by a caudal stalk, and there are several tentacles or arms covered with fine whisker-like structures growing above it. Some twisted shapes can be used to create vortices, with limited aid in filter feeding.

To deal with this strange species, the well-developed sickle limbs of the feather-winged horseshoe crab are somewhat inconvenient, so it is suitable to improve the chelicerae of the short-winged horseshoe crab. These primitive echinoderms could only move their food-filtering arms to a limited extent, and were unable to effectively resist. With two waves of its chelicerae, the improved version of the short-winged horseshoe crab easily pulled out several ringworms from the sand on the seabed and brought them back to their mother's nest for them to absorb.

(End of this chapter)